


I Called You Dummy

by Mybaloney



Series: Maine Universe [1]
Category: House of Cards (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Relationship Negotiation, there's sex in it eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 01:35:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 52,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14274081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mybaloney/pseuds/Mybaloney
Summary: My girlfriend and I have an AU where Ed Meechum doesn't die and he and Frank decide to up and move to Maine. I've started writing it down, and this is the first story.There's really not much you need to know in advance, since it's all expositioned and more-or-less contextualized within, but at any rate, they're gonna move to Maine, and this is a story about them deciding to do that, but also about the fact that they'll have to learn to communicate before they manage to move town.





	1. Chapter 1

 

The President hadn’t actually asked him to come to Maine. That was what Ed was thinking about at the gym, for about an hour, where apparently he’d gone to fail in his resolution to not think about it.

 

Ed didn’t think he’d ever successfully achieved fitness Zen or whatever people called it, but this time he didn’t even get close. In the shower, after, while he was soaping up, he imagined the President’s hands all over him, then he remembered the emphasis the President had put on the term ‘working relationship’ as he was not asking Ed to come to Maine. He ate a salad for lunch and he thought about the occasions he’d seen the President try to eat a salad, seen him regarding it angrily and becoming inexplicably more furious with every bite. He drove home from the gym and he thought about driving the President. He thought about the first time he ever did drive the President. He remembered the President sitting up front with him in Gaffney, arguing with the GPS.

 

But the President had not asked him to come to Maine, no matter how much Ed kept thinking about all of that. That’s what Ed kept reminding himself, in a stern internal voice, as if sternness would help it sink in. Those were the facts: he didn’t ask. And Ed had made a decision on the basis of those facts, and it was time to move on from it and accept that the decision had been made. It didn’t do any good to think about the ways the President had _sort of_ asked him to come to Maine because the point was that he hadn’t. He had _instructed_ Ed that his detail would be moving to Maine with him, and he had _assumed_ that Ed would like to retain his position as the head of his PD, and he had _implied_ that he wanted Ed to do that, but none of those things was an actual request and certainly none of them were a request to come to Maine _with_ him in any meaningful sense.

 

Ed knew what it looked like, but what it looked like was wrong. It wasn’t a bluff, because he wasn’t gambling. He’d made a decision. He couldn’t spend the rest of his life hoping for something that would never happen, so when the President had refused to give him a reason to come to Maine (when he in fact had said “I didn’t know I needed a reason”, and in a distinctly assholish tone considering the context), Ed had nodded once, then he had left the room, he had called in all of his leave, and he had gone home.

 

The President could never finish a salad. Ed wondered, every time, why he even bothered eating them. He figured people were just supposed to eat salads, even Presidents. The image of the President aggressively throwing his fork back into the container and making an offended ‘harrumph’ sound at it would stay with him for his whole life probably, if only because he’d seen it so many times. The President also referred to the GPS using human pronouns. He called it ‘her’. Ed had no idea if that was a generational thing, a personal quirk, or a deliberately calculated adorableness. Either way, whenever he thought about it, he wanted to kiss him.

 

He wondered how the President spoke to Siri. He’d never heard him do it, but he probably, Ed thought, used an honorific. ‘Miss Siri’ or something like that. He didn’t think Siri had a last name, but if she did, the President would call her Miss that.  

 

On the way home, he called his mother. He figured now was as good a time as any. There was absolutely nothing to do right now, except drive to the gym, drive home from the gym, lie around watching tv, and try not to think about the President. He thought he could use the distraction. He made the call hands-free as his one concession to driver safety, because he knew his mother would ask about it.

 

His mother took a while to pick up. She sounded to-the-point and breathless when she did, like she was otherwise occupied. “Hello? What?”

 

“Hey Ma, it’s Eddie,” Ed said. “You busy? What’s going on?”

“I’m painting the kitchen,” his mother said.

“You’re painting the… hey, I can call back?”

“Where are you? I can hear driving.”

“Just out. How are you?”

“Busy. Are you using the hands-free?”

“Yes Ma. I can call back.”

“Don’t you dare,” his mother said. “I haven’t heard from you in weeks. I could use a break anyway. Tell me what you’re up to.”

 

Ed laughed. “Not much,” he said. “Why are you painting the kitchen?”

“Some of the paint came off when I was cleaning the cabinets, and I was about to touch it up, but then I thought to myself, why not? It’s about time for a change. So I went and I bought some new paint and got started. That was this morning. How are you?”

“I’m fine. On your own?”

“Yes, on my own. Nobody else is here. And it definitely was about time. You should have seen what it looked like behind the oven.”

“Ma, why’d you pull the oven out! No-one’s ever gonna look behind there!”

 

He actually heard his mother making a disapproving face. “It doesn’t matter if people look. It matters if I know.”

“You shouldn’t be moving something like that anyway. Why didn’t you wait for me? I’d have helped you!”

“I moved it just fine on my own. Besides, who knows when I’ll see you again? It might be never at this rate, and I sit here for the rest of my life with a half painted kitchen.”

 

Ed rolled his eyes. “It won’t be _never_. Actually, it might be pretty soon. You read the news lately?”

“I don’t know, Eddie, I pay about as much attention as I can tolerate. What’s happening?”

“The President resigned.”

 

He heard a pause. Then rustling. He thought that was probably his mom looking through the newspaper. He heard her muttering. “… paint all over it...” She must have spread it on the floor or the table or something to catch the drips.

 

“I can tell you about it if you like,” Ed offered.

“Is it political?”

“I mean… it’s the President.”

“Enough attitude, Eddie, you know what I mean. Give me the easy version.”

“Well, they started an investigation and he resigned so they wouldn’t have to finish it.”

“What’d he do?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Was it illegal?”

“I’d have to check the details to tell you exactly how,” Ed said, lying through his teeth. He knew exactly how, and extremely well, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell it to his mother. It felt like ratting the President out somehow, even though all of it was in the public record.

 

He heard his mother clucking her tongue. “Does that mean his wife’s the President now?”

“Yup, that’s what it means.”

“This is why I said I needed the easy version,” his mother said. “I don’t understand this at all. It’s like royal England or something, who even knows what’s going on anymore.”

“Well, she’s the President.”

“She’s okay,” his mother said. “I like her. Good, clear head on her shoulders. It could be worse.”

“I like her too.”

“What’s he going to do?”

“He’s moving to Maine.”

 

“To _Maine_?” his mother said. “Why?”

“Who knows? I guess it’s his retirement thing. It’s always either Florida or Maine and he’s… more the Maine type.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed that in a million years. Who will he have to lecture at up there?”

“Ma, don’t say that.”

“If he’s not the President anymore I can say what I like.”

“Ma,” Ed said.

“Oh, calm down.”

“I’m calm.”

 

His mother allowed him that small lie. Ed heard her do it. He wanted to ask her why she did it for a second, but then he didn’t. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “I’d never have pictured that man just up and moving to Maine,” his mother said.

“Neither did I,” Ed said. “But then I didn’t predict resignation. I guess you just never know.”

“I guess you never do.”

“Nope.”

“So,” his mother said. “I guess you’re looking for another job.”

“Yeah,” Ed said. “I guess I am.”

 

“You don’t sound too happy about that,” his mother said.

“Well initially I thought I might keep working on his detail when he moved.”

“Doesn’t he want you to?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Well so what? You didn’t really want to do that for the rest of your life, did you?”

“Well yeah, I thought I did,” Ed said. “Maine’s closer to home too, you’d have liked that. But probably I’ll just keep working for the service down here, so I guess it won’t be much different. I’m not really looking for another job, I’m just thinking.”

“Depends what part of Maine,” his mother said. “It goes all the way up to Canada.”

Ed rolled his eyes at that too. “I know, Ma.”

 

His mother – somehow – heard him do that this time. Or maybe she’d heard it in his tone the first time and had just taken until now to get tired of it. “Okay, smartass. Your mother isn’t an idiot. I’m just stating a fact.”

“I know, Ma.”

“Do you know what part of Maine?”

“I don’t.”

“Well there you go.

 

Ed laughed. He could picture his mother’s face as she said that, that triumphant smile she’d give at being right. He heard clinking sounds, and he pictured her making that face with phone between her head and her shoulder, making a cup of tea. The image comforted him. He saw it as she spoke. “So you can’t keep doing your same job, but in Maine,” she said, “so you’re just going to keep doing your same dangerous job in Washington, and you’re not going to consider anything else.”

“Guess not.”

“That’s what you called to tell me? That nothing’s changing except your boss, and you think I shouldn’t have painted the kitchen?”

 

“I’m not saying anything about the kitchen,” Ed said. “There are options, with the Service, but maybe something else would be better. I don’t know. I’ll come see you in between anyway. If you have to move the fridge or something, don’t do it, I’ll do it when I’m there. How’s New Haven?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“What color are you doing the kitchen?”

“A cream color. Don’t change the…”

“So, cream?”

“You’d say cream, I’d say cream. The bucket says ‘cotton balls’.”

“Cotton balls are white!”

 

His mother sighed. “Well, the paint is cream, Eddie. And I wish you’d take the opportunity to think about doing something else for a while. You’re still young enough for a change.”

“I’ll be 40 next year.”

“That’s just proof of how young you are, if you think 40 is too old.”

“You were putting a kid through college by then. It’s plenty old.”

“Grown, yes. Old no. Some people just get later starts, Eddie. Especially boys. You’ve still got time.”

“I dunno,” Ed said. He didn’t want to explain how old 40 felt to him, and how impossible everything looked from where he was standing. Right now, anyway, with his dull, hurting heart.

 

His mother must have heard the reservation in his voice, because she dropped the banter for a second. “You alright, Eddie bear? Something else going on?”

“Nah, nothing,” Ed said. “I’m just in a weird mood. It’s starting to get dark so early, even down here. Makes me think about… it must be pretty cold up in New Haven, huh?”

 

He could hear his mother deciding whether or not to say anything about how brazenly he’d changed the subject again, and mid-sentence this time too. She didn’t, but from her tone Ed thought it might have been a close call. “Oh, it’s been alright,” she said.

“You keeping warm enough?”

“Don’t ask that,” his mother said. “I don’t care how old you think you are, that kind of thing just makes _me_ feel old, as if I didn’t already. No thank you.”

“But are you?”

“Are _you_?”

“Yes, momma, I’ve got my coat and mittens.”

“ _Smart_.”

“And I’m eating three meals and taking my vitamins.”

“Good,” his mother said, refusing to understand the joke, even though Ed knew she did.

 

That was all she said for a little while. It sounded like she’d zoned out. Ed prompted her. “Ma?”

“You’re still so gangly,” his mother said, in a strange far-away voice. “You’re just a collection of limbs. I used to think you’d fill out when you got bigger, but you just grew _up_. Straight up like a beanpole.”

Ed snorted. “I eat a lot. It’s probably going to hit me all at once when I’m 50 or something.”

“I don’t think so,” his mother said. “I think you’re just skinny. Enjoy it. Most of us aren’t so lucky.”

“If you say so.”

“I’m worried, Eddie,” she said. Now the tone was serious. “You sound a little off.”

 

“Don’t be,” Ed said. “I’m a-okay.”

“You’d say you were a-okay if your hair was on fire. You said you were a-okay just before they had to take you in for a second surgery. That’s exactly why I worry, because you say you’re a-okay.”

“I’m grown up, Ma,” Ed said. “You said it yourself. I can fend for myself. I served overseas.”

“Is that supposed to make me _not_ worry about you? Do you hear yourself when you talk, Eddie? ‘Don’t worry, Ma, I’m always up for trying to get killed, what’s the problem?’”

 

Ed laughed. “C’mon, Ma.”

“You come on. If you’re so damn old and mature why don’t you get yourself a quiet, respectable job and stop getting yourself shot? When are you going to grow out of trying to give your mother a heart attack? _That’s_ maturity.”

 

Ed felt himself starting to say ‘that was one time!’ in a pissy, bratty voice but then he stopped himself. Firstly, ‘one time’ was a pretty specious technicality, and secondly it was a bad argument anyway. He remembered his mother’s face when he woke up in hospital, he remembered what she’d looked like: white like a ghost. He took a breath and shut it down. “I’ll think about it.”

 

“No you won’t,” his mother said.

“I will, Ma. I’m thinking about it now.”

“You’re a polite young man, _some of the time_ , you’ve got skills. You could do anything you wanted to, Eddie. You just won’t.”

“I don’t want to argue about it.”

“Yes you do, I can hear it.”

“You’re crabbier than usual. Any particular reason?”

 

He braced himself for the telling off that was coming to him, but somehow it didn’t happen. His mother just sighed. Finally, she said, “church merger, maybe.”

“What?”

“Didn’t I tell you? They’re merging the parishes up here, or a lot of them. A few churches are shutting down.”

“Not yours?”

“No, not mine but… it’s just a change. A lot of things are changing.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Never mind about it,” his mother said. “I’ll tell you all about it when you come up.”

“I’m interested, Ma, I’m listening.”

“Oh, never mind.”

She’d started to sound very far away. Ed wondered about it. He worried about it too, though there was no point admitting that because she’d take it about as well as he did, maybe worse. He wished he had some comforting tidbit to tell her about his life. He almost, very, very almost, told her about the situation with the President, though obviously he would have changed the names and the ‘working relationship’. He imagined that telling her, even though it was sad, would make her feel closer to him. It might even make him feel better. Plenty of fish in the sea, he imagined her saying, only there weren’t.

 

He didn’t know how much his mother knew or picked up about any of that. The hesitation in her voice sometimes, and her cautious avoidance of pronouns, made him pretty sure she knew some of it, if not the part that related directly to the President. Still, as long as he didn’t say anything, he’d never have to find out how much she knew. There were areas of conversation they didn’t broach with each other, and this was one of them. Which was fair – he tended not to ask her for clarification of the things his father talked about on the phone the couple of times a year Ed called him.

 

Not for the first time, he wondered about what he’d do when his mother got older. When she might need more than occasional phone calls. That had to be a long, long way off though. She was the same age as the President, or close enough, so not actually that old at all. If he could move to Maine, then she could manage a church merger. Thinking about that, he figured she was right after all, when she’d told him 40 was still young enough to make changes. He was just being morbid. About that, and about her, because the President had not asked him to come to Maine. That made everything feel bleaker than it was. But it would just be temporary. He knew it would just be temporary.

 

“I gotta go, Ma,” he said, shaking himself out of it. “I’ll give you a call when I’m coming up.”

“Give me a call before then. Not weeks this time.”

“Yes, Ma.”

“I love you, Eddie. Be safe.”

“Don’t move the fridge.”

“Then come up soon.”

“I love you too,” Ed said. “Don’t move the fridge.”

 

He hung up and drove over the river. He drove home and tried to relax. He had another shower for no other reason than that he didn’t know what else to do. He tried to watch TV but he struggled to pay attention. He couldn’t read either. He drank beers but they didn’t do anything. He tried to sleep. It didn’t work, really, so he cleaned his apartment from top to bottom. That felt productive at least.


	2. Chapter 2

 

The President called him the next day, just after his third and, he’d decided, final shower. He’d just put on sweats and started to think about how he was going to make it through another evening of not being able to concentrate on anything except not being at work. He let his phone ring a couple of times before he answered. He wasn’t sure why he did that. Being a Rules Girl, he thought. If he remembered that movie right, he was supposed to play hard-to-get to snare his man. If the President asked him for a date on Friday, he should pretend he already had plans.

 

Then he hit accept, because he wasn’t a Rules Girl, he didn’t date, he wasn’t trying to snare anybody. He didn’t even know why any of that had occurred to him. He guessed it was because not dating had left him without much to go on except movies.

 

“It’s not to be my bodyguard,” the President said, immediately.

“What?”

“Edward,” the President said. “It’s not to be my bodyguard.”

 

Ed closed his eyes. He took a breath through his nose. “Okay.”

“Are you understanding me?” the President said, urgently.

 

Ed wasn’t sure that he was.

 

“Edward? Are you there?”

“Um,” Ed said. “Is it still a job offer?”

 

“Yes,” the President said. “No. I don’t know. I don’t know how to say what I need to say, I’m not sure what you want me to say. But even if you were coming to head my detail that’s not why I asked you.”

“So why did you?”

 

The President paused. “I’ll come to you. Are you at home?”

“Yes, but…”

“Alright. I’ll see you momentarily,” he said. Then he hung up without waiting for Ed’s response.

 

He seemed to actually mean momentarily, because the time between his hanging up and Ed’s intercom buzzing was minimal enough Ed had only just opened his drawers and hadn’t even decided what to change into. The President had to have been parked down the street, waiting for Ed to answer. Which wasn’t surprising, actually. Actually, it was pretty on form and almost certainly what he’d been doing. What would he have done if Ed had asked him not to come? Ed chose not to think about it.

 

He buzzed the President in and opened his door a crack. He wished he’d had time to put something else on. He didn’t want to meet the President in sweats, but he couldn’t chance getting caught half way through getting dressed either. Still, at least he was clean, he guessed. And his apartment was. He had a couple of beers in the fridge, something to offer at least. If the President wanted to smoke, he’d have to do it on the fire escape and he didn’t know how to bring that up, but maybe he could just open the window and hope the super wouldn’t notice. He wanted to sit down, to look casual, but he didn’t feel casual at all. In the end he just stood in the middle of the room and waited.

 

The President closed the door behind him when he came in. He frowned. Then he stepped across the room, took Ed’s face in his hands, and kissed him. “My darling,” he breathed, when he pulled his face away. It sounded like pure relief.

 

Something about being called ‘darling’ made Ed want to cry. Not in a bad way, he didn’t think, or not exactly, but it made something in him crumple and falter. And the way the President was dressed, wearing a sweater and casual pants, impeccably put together but definitely dressed down, that too was oddly affecting. He’d done it deliberately, obviously. Dressed to visit Ed’s apartment. And it was really him, really here, for real.

 

Ed hoped it didn’t show on his face. That wouldn’t be practical.

 

He stepped back, out of the President’s hands. “You were quick,” he said, flatly.

“Well, I was on my way.”

“You know where I live, I guess.”

“You’re not surprised by that, are you?”

“Not lately.”

 

The President frowned. Ed got it. It was slightly over the line, him saying that. Or it would have been if there was still a professional line to cross. His hair was wet still and he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He wished he’d blow-dried it.

 

“It’s pretty vital for my office to know where the head of my protection detail lives, wouldn’t you say?” the President said. There was warning in his tone.

 

“That’s not why you know,” Ed said. The President narrowed his eyes. Then he seemed to remember that he had some kind of goal here and shifted both his expression and his feet. It looked awkward. That was strange. He didn’t usually look awkward.

 

“Have you got anything to drink?” he asked. It seemed like he said it to correct himself. It also seemed like it didn’t entirely work, because while it did sound bossy, as per usual, it also sounded slightly sheepish.

 

“I’ve got some beers?” Ed said.

“I’ll take one now, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“It’s not.”

“Thank you.”

“You have to go on the fire escape if you want to smoke,” Ed said, stupidly.

 

The President didn’t say anything to that. Ed wasn’t surprised. The President didn’t usually respond to stupid things.

 

He recouped his losses by leaving the President where he stood while getting the beers, without orienting him or showing him around. There wasn’t a lot to see – Ed had lived in the same open plan studio since he’d lived in DC and you could see pretty much all of it from where the President was standing, including the kitchen – but he felt like purposefully striding over to the fridge without first offering an orientation was a gesture he needed to make.

 

A pointless gesture though, which he realized almost as soon as he did it. It might have worked on someone else, but it was never going to work on the President. The President just marched over and sat on Ed’s sofa and waited, like the self-important asshole he was. That was irritating. And oddly comforting. Familiar in an aggravating way. Confusing. Ed didn’t know what to think about it. He brought the beers over.

 

“Sit down,” the President said, when he did. He said it as if it was his own sofa and he was granting Ed permission to sit on it. Ed didn’t argue, he handed a beer to the President and sat down. He wondered if his reactions to that kind of commanding largess from him would always be this Pavlovian. He also wondered if giving in so readily on the things he did was what gave him the traction to resist on the things he didn’t. He wondered which one this situation was. He said none of this out loud.

 

“Edward,” the President said, when Ed sat. “Edward,” he said again. “Edward, Edward.” He adjusted himself with a great show of casualness, but his voice didn’t sound casual at all.

 

That’s my name, Ed thought. He took a sip of his beer and waited for the President to either do the same thing or say something else. He looked like he was expecting Ed to say something first, but Ed didn’t. And he wouldn’t.

 

“Well,” the President said, finally, magnanimously.

 

Ed continued saying nothing. He took another drink and stared flatly.

 

“It’s not to be my bodyguard,” the President offered.

 

Not enough. “Yeah, you mentioned that,” Ed said.

 

The President frowned. He was frustrated, obviously, that Ed wasn’t helping him out, but he’d stay frustrated because Ed wasn’t going to. Ed kept his face impassive and sipped beer like none of it mattered. If the President wanted to say something, then he’d have to say it himself.

 

The President glared at him for a solid second when he figured that out. But then he cleared his throat and rallied. He appeared to swallow a lot of things in that gesture, mostly pride. He tried again. “Edward,” he said. “I’d like you to come with me to Maine.”

 

“Uh huh?” Ed said.

 

“I’d like you to come with me to Maine and it’s because I have… it’s because I care for you. I care for you a great deal.”

 

Sometimes Ed wondered about what the President had modeled himself on. He suspected there was very little of the Original Francis left in his way of speaking, very little of the boy from the peach farm and his trotted out tales of sanitized and homey destitution. The President had constituted himself carefully, Ed assumed that much. But whether he had based himself on particular heroes, or had just aped the wealthier people around him, the way of articulating things he’d arrived at made him sound like a Regency novel. Like Mister Darcy or some other overly formal but needlessly flowery character.

 

That, more than his actual confession, made Ed feel tenderly towards him. He sighed. “Thank you.”

“Does that resolve things?” the President said.

 

“Uh,” Ed said. The tenderness didn’t exactly evaporate, but it took on a definite inflection. The President’s relentlessness was, as ever, somewhat charming, but it was also extremely irritating under the circumstances. Kind of like his behavior with the sofa, actually.

“So it doesn’t?” the President said, earnestly but somehow also bossily.

“Well, just…” Ed said. “What is it? Do you want me to… live with you, or are you saying I should get an apartment up there and we… what, we date? Would you still want me to head up the PD? I just need some functional details, okay? Uh, Sir.”

 

“You can stop saying ‘sir’,” the President said. “For this kind of thing, anyway.”

 

That was definitely intended as a subtle sex joke but Ed wasn’t in the mood. “I just need some functional details, okay Frank?”

 

The President’s mouth twitched. He looked down as if he was ashamed of his reaction, then back up as if to cover it. “I really wasn’t prepared for how truly bizarre that is.”

 

Ed agreed, privately, but that wasn’t the point. They could talk about how weird it was to suddenly start saying first names when he’d got his answers. He said nothing and kept staring.

 

“Edward,” the President said, “Ed…”

 

Ed went kept right on saying nothing.

 

“I suppose I thought you might eventually live with me,” the President said, eventually. “I didn’t want to assume. I don’t know what a post-White House detail usually does. Do they provide accommodations?”

 

“No,” Ed said. He blinked. “You know that the Secret Service doesn’t pay for my apartment, right?”

 

The President seemed genuinely surprised by that. “Doesn’t it? I assumed that as public servants…”

“No,” Ed said. “I pay rent, out of my salary. Like, uh, most people.”

“Well, what about all that Secret Service space in the West Wing?”

“That’s where my desk is,” Ed said. “I have a desk, Frank.”

 

The President’s mouth twitched again. At Ed using his name, almost certainly. Ed took pity on him. “Sorry,” he said. “Is it… do you want me to stop calling you that, for now at least?”

“No, I don’t,” the President said. “Don’t stop any of it.”

 

Ed took a sip of his beer. He did that to steady himself, because the President’s face confused him. He’d never seen him look like that. It gave him pause. He wanted to be softer with him but he didn’t know how. “Well okay,” he said. “I mean. You see that there’s a practical concern here.”

“Yes, I’m starting to.”

“In your opinion, what would be the resolution of that practical concern?”

“I’m too old to ‘date’, Edward. Chronologically, but also in just… every other way imaginable. I don’t want to date. That’s not what I’m asking you for.”

“Okay. Well, what does that mean, practically, for me, in terms of moving to Maine with you?”

 

Ed hadn’t planned it, and he wasn’t doing it on purpose, but he was, he realized, pretty much trotting out his policeman patter in his quest for information here. So much for being softer. He didn’t think the President had ever met Officer Ed before, only deployed him on others. Once Ed realized he was doing it, he expected the President to get angry at being spoken to like he was just anyone, like he was one of Ed’s investigations. But the President hadn’t gotten angry.

 

If anything, actually, he seemed nervous. Ed hadn’t known that nervous was on the list of things the President was capable of being, but there he was, hands fidgeting on his beer bottle, looking like he might start tearing the label at any moment. It was bizarre. “It’s alright, sir,” Ed said. “I’m listening.”

 

The President looked at him gratefully. “Thank you.”

“And I appreciate you saying what you said.”

“That’s alright. I, uh. I’m sorry I didn’t say it initially.”

 

Ed’s heart ached a little at that embarrassed, vulnerable apology. “It’s alright, Frank,” he said. “I know who you are.”

 

The name was too much. The President’s face made that obvious. Because despite what he’d said about it, using his name was too jarring on top of all of this. Ed wanted to apologize.

 

“Yes I know you do,” the President said. “I know that about you, that’s exactly why I’m asking you to come with me.”

“Oh,” Ed said.

“Yes. I thought… I thought maybe things would be just as they are now, but in Maine but actually… that’s quite… stupid, isn’t it? Given the magnitude of my… uh…”

“It’s not _stupid_ …”

“And I don’t want that, and you don’t either, do you?”

 

Ed wasn’t ready to answer that. “You know it means I’d have to resign,” he said.

“What?”

“They don’t let you work on the Protection Detail of someone you’re… in a relationship with. Compromises your awareness, decision-making, stuff like that. I mean, you had to know that, right?”

“You’ve never been anything other than professional.”

 

“Thanks,” Ed said, “but this would be different. Even if they would listen to that argument – which they won’t, it’s a policy issue – this isn’t sneaking around in back rooms anymore. I’d have to resign, and I’d have to resign soon, before this goes any further.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

“Can’t ask me not to. If you’re asking me to do… the other thing, then you’re also asking me to do that. It’s unavoidable.”

 

The President grunted and leaned back in his seat. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

 

No shit, Ed thought, but he didn’t say anything.

 

“Do you think you could resign?” the President asked. “I mean, can you? Is that even possible for you? I know how you feel about… serving your country.”

 

Ed registered that the President was expending some effort to avoid making another sex joke, and he appreciated it. He appreciated it enough that he answered honestly. “I don’t know,” he said. “I mean… I don’t know. That’s hard for me, I guess.”

 

It occurred to him that he could have made his own joke about the word ‘hard’ and he barely suppressed a burst of manic, inappropriate laughter. The President sighed. “I worry about you sometimes, Edward.”

“You shouldn’t. I know what I signed up for.”

“No, it’s not for the reason you think. It’s because I think sometimes… that there are things you won’t let yourself have.”

“I didn’t know you thought about me that much.”

“Oh, Edward,” the President said, softly.

 

“Are you saying you do?” Ed said.

“Yes, I very much am. Does that change anything?”

“Maybe,” Ed said. “I need to think about it. I’m sorry.”

 

The President took his beer out of his hands and set it on the coffee table. He took Ed’s hands in his own and held them. “No,” he said. “No apologies. Would you like to be alone, while you think?”

“No, it’s okay,” Ed said. “I’m sorry my apartment isn’t…”

“Your apartment is charming. You’re charming.”

 

Ed didn’t know what his face was doing. He wanted to smile, joke, point out that there was nothing charming about his apartment, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know why. He stared at his hands, nestled inside of the President’s hands as if they belonged there, and tried to think of something to say.

 

He did that until the President kissed his cheek. “I don’t know how I’ll survive without you, Edward,” he said. “I don’t mean that as… not to make you… it’s just, when I think about it, when I think about this enforced exile, this being out to pasture like some kind of lame horse who’s had a stay of execution… what makes it bearable is you. I imagine you being with me. I never considered you wouldn’t be there.”

 

Ed closed his eyes. The President kissed him again, higher up on his cheek, then on his temple. “I should have done. I should have asked.”

“Yeah,” Ed said. “I mean. I didn’t know either. But yeah.”

“Well, now I am asking.”

“Thanks,” Ed said.

“And if you won’t come,” the President told him, “I’ll have to make do with visiting you from time to time.”

 

He sounded so sad. Sad and old, and like everything he’d said about his enforced retirement had been absolutely true instead of just dramatic bluster. Ed’s heart broke for him all over again. He thought about what his life looked like if the President was just gone from it. And he’d expected that to hurt, he had, it already had been hurting. But not this much. This felt physical.

 

“I’d visit you,” he said. “My mom lives in New Haven anyway, it wouldn’t be that much out of my way.”

“Yes, I know,” the President said. “That might be nice. Little visits.”

“Of course. I wouldn’t just…”

“Oh, Edward,” the President said, forlornly. “What am I going to do?”

 

Ed couldn’t help himself any longer. He pushed forward and pressed his cheek against the President’s and hugged him. “You’ll survive,” he said, into the President’s hair. “You always do.”

 

He thought he felt the President startle. Flinch, maybe. But then he put his hands on Ed’s shoulders. “Your faith in me is moving,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s warranted. It feels like more effort than usual. That’s old age again, probably.”

“Oh god, I’ll come,” Ed said.

 

“What?” the President said.

“I’ll come with you. To Maine.”

 

He felt the President’s hands gripping him. He hadn’t said anything in response. Ed kept talking. “I’ll need to figure some things out but…”

“I know. Whatever you need.”

“I don’t want to talk about it now. I don’t want to do the practical stuff now. It’s too much, I can’t... I just…”

“I know. I know darling.”

“But we’ll need to. My job and…”

“Yes, of course.”

“But I’ll come.”

“Thank you,” the President said. He absolutely meant it. Ed could hear that.

 

He hadn’t realized how tense he’d been until he heard it. He guessed he was pretty used to being tense, maybe, so tense didn’t register with him anymore. This sure registered though, whatever it was. It loosened his limbs and bowled him over and he buried his head against the President’s shoulder and tightened his arms around his waist. The President hugged him back, tenderly. It felt like he was rocking him a little bit. He stroked Ed’s hair. “You’re a bit damp,” he said. “Did you just have a shower?”

 

“Sorry,” Ed said. “I didn’t get time to… do anything, really. I’m wearing… there must be some kind of law about wearing sweats in front of a head of state.”

“Not that I know of.”

“Sorry.”

“Oh please,” the President said, “it’s adorable. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wearing something other than a suit. It feels illicit.”

“I just didn’t want you to walk in on me naked. Which, uh. More illicit.”

The President snorted appreciatively. “I certainly wouldn’t have minded.”

 

Ed burrowed, and the President kept stroking. “You think I don’t think about you,” he said, “and I don’t know how you possibly justify that conclusion. You’re a dream. A slightly wet dream, specifically, at the moment.”

“C’mon.”

“You come on. Don’t pretend you don’t know. You certainly flirt like you know.”

“I’m definitely aging out of my twink years.”

 

“I don’t know what that means,” the President said, “but I’m sure I don’t agree with it.”

“You don’t know what a twink is?”

“Oh, basically. It wouldn’t matter anyway. You’re more of a classic beauty.”

“So is this what Maine’ll be like?” Ed said. “You’ll just say stuff like this to me while I sit here and suck it up?”

“That’s the goal, yes. Manner of sucking TBD.”

 

Ed snorted. “God, that’s dirty.”

“Yes, because you’re dirty.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“No.”

 

The President had started stroking him under his shirt. Gently, on the small of his back, soft like breath and intoxicating. Ed squirmed against it. “Oh hello,” the President said, sounding satisfied. “You like that, do you?”

“It’s okay,” Ed said.

“Perhaps dirty is the wrong word. Sexually enthusiastic. You’re certainly that.”

“You’re worse.”

“That’s what you think,” the President said. “And perhaps you’re right. But the

only way we’ll really know for sure is with a lot of experimenting.”

 

His other hand slipped up under Ed’s shirt now too. He brushed his fingers over Ed’s skin, pulled him close again. “I really do imagine it as a sort of idyll,” he went on. “I imagine we’ll ride moose around and there’ll be a lot of flannel shirts and wood chopping, and of course fireplace lovemaking.”

“That’s really how you imagine it?”

“That’s how I’m imagining it now. I’m imagining nailing you in the ass on a bearskin rug, it’s pretty good. That’s a very Maine image. Don’t you think?”

 

Ed tried to pretend that hadn’t made him gasp hopelessly. He wasn’t really succeeding. The President’s hands moved lazily over his body, pulled his shirt up and stroked him there, and he knew his “sure, I guess,” sounded about as convincingly cool as outright begging. He didn’t really understand how he’d gone from zero to turned on this quickly, but he figured it was something to do with the weight of events. Like he’d used up all his firmness and now he was extra vulnerable to suggestion. Like someone under hypnosis. Who’d he even been kidding anyway? He’d have followed the President into hell, let alone to Maine.

 

It probably didn’t matter why. The President kissed him and he went with it because it felt soft and sweet and overwhelming, and he wondered at the way things seemed to fall away around it. It wasn’t real, any of this, it was hazy like a dream, and they may as well kiss. The President just stroked him. “Would you like to go to bed?”

 

Ed seized. His cheeks were burning suddenly and he didn’t know why. It was his bed, and it was right there, steps away in his small apartment, and the President wanted to get in it with him and why not, but it felt daunting. He didn’t mean to freeze up like that, he didn’t mean to hesitate, but he did, and he couldn’t explain it. The President watched him, quietly, he was more still than Ed had ever seen him, and when Ed managed to choke down enough to see that clearly, it seemed right that they should do that. He nodded. He said “okay.”

 

It must have sounded as strangled as it had felt coming out because nothing happened. But then Ed realized the President was still watching him, waiting for him to lead the way, so he did it by holding out his hand. The President took it, solemnly, and followed him.

 

They didn’t get in, but lay down on the covers. Then they kissed. It felt sweet. Gentle. The President pulled Ed’s body towards him, traced his cheek with his finger, then his nose. “How did you break it?” he asked. His voice was quiet. The light was low.

“Slid into home on my face,” Ed said.

 

“Ouch,” the President said. His hand had joined the other around Ed’s waist. Stroking Ed’s back again. Slipping his fingers into the waistband of Ed’s sweats.

“Yeah.”

“I can feel how hard you are,” the President said. “I can feel it against me. That’s so nice, darling.”

 

Ed kissed him. He wriggled and pressed closer. He could feel him too. And he felt the President grabbing his ass, pawing at him. It felt good to be touched like that, so appreciatively. Kissed like that too, because these kisses felt the same kind of reverent and hungry, like the same kind of grateful flattery. He knew it was weird to think it, but it flickered across his mind anyway: he could tell somehow, he could feel it, that there was nowhere else the President wanted to be.  

 

He felt so soft inside when he thought about that. Between the kisses and the fondling and the small grunts the President made, he barely registered what he himself was doing except that he had his arms around the President’s waist and that his body felt soft and good and comforting and sweetly harmonious in the way it was pressed up against him. It occurred to him that he ought to do something to progress things rather than just lying here being kissed and fondled but he didn’t know what. And he didn’t want to interrupt whatever this was that was happening.

 

He didn’t have to either. The President moved over him, slowly and easily, and rolled Ed onto his back. He pulled his shirt up again and eased his sweats down over his hips. He kissed Ed’s body while he did it, and stroked him, softly, slowly, inch by inch, until Ed closed his eyes and leaned up into it and the President slid his mouth around Ed’s dick.

 

Ed sighed. It shot through him, gentle and tingly and slippery, and he leaned back into the pillows to let it happen. The President’s technique had always been reliable, but he was taking his sweet time here, gripping Ed’s dick by the base of it, running his tongue up the shaft, closing his lips around the head of it before swallowing him down again. The slowness of it felt appropriate. Ed felt self-conscious for a second about how drawn out it was because of the fact that he’d started to make noise but then he stopped caring. It was his apartment, after all. He could make whatever noise he wanted to. Besides, he couldn’t have cared for long anyway, not once he felt the President grip his hip with his other hand for leverage and the strength in that hand made him shiver.

 

At that, the President looked up at him. He seemed to be watching for something in Ed’s face, and he either saw it or he didn’t, because he took a cue and moved down again, and firmly and surely pulled Ed’s body down with him, tilted Ed’s hips up towards him, spread Ed’s thighs apart with his hands, buried his face in and kissed in there, on the tender skin right next to Ed’s balls. Then very tenderly on them, opening his mouth around them a little bit, and then behind them. And then again in that sensitive spot. Ed felt each kiss profoundly, in a line, and then softly, suddenly, he felt the President start tonguing his ass.

 

The moment he felt that, he melted. It was the nicest feeling in the world, and it spread out in him like he was sinking physically into the bed, soft and taken apart, like he was dissipating into molecules. He heard his breath as if it were miles away, felt the glow in his stomach, the soft pressure in his dick building up somehow, both from the fact that the President had reached up to hold it, and from the tiny electric shocks that pulsed in it at each gentle, wet, probing touch from the President’s tongue.

 

He was going to come. Any second. A luxurious, sparkling feeling had subsumed his whole body and he felt his stomach clenching inevitably and he tried to slow it down in his head but he couldn’t, nothing stuck. But he couldn’t just come now. Not so quickly, on this particular day. Too much was happening for him to just come everywhere.

 

It took effort but he sat himself up to interrupt it. The movement made the President look up, by necessity. “Alright, darling?”

 

Ed nodded. Alright didn’t remotely cover it but he pushed through it anyway. He felt how flushed his cheeks were, and heard that he was panting. “You don’t have to…”

“I want to.”

“No I mean you don’t have to… I mean I’m just… really close to… and… I haven’t… I’m gonna come.”

 

The President had started to look amused by him. He raised his eyebrows from between Ed’s thighs. “That was the intention.”

“But I feel like I’m not…”

“Shh,” the President said, as if he was scolding him. He probably was. Fondly though. “Shh. You’re worried for nothing.”

 

Maybe he was, Ed thought. But maybe he wasn’t. He frowned, trying to think of how to say it. “Well, I…”

 

The President grunted in apparent exasperation. Then, before Ed could finish or figure out how to say anything else, he moved. He pulled himself up over Ed’s body and loomed over him serious-faced until Ed’s objection froze in his throat. Once satisfied with Ed’s silence, the President grabbed his hand and pressed it down into his own unzipped pants until Ed understood what he was supposed to do and curled his fingers around the shaft of the President’s dick. It was hard and hot and slick already, and he could barely stand it.

 

“You feel that?” the President said.

 

Ed felt soft moans fall out of him instead of any answer.

 

“That’s all you, sweetpea,” the President said, leaning forward again. “That’s what it does for me to be down there eating your delicious ass like it’s caviar.”

“Oh,” Ed breathed. “Oh god.”

“Yes. That’s how good you are to me. Do you feel it?”

 

“Oh,” Ed breathed, again. He wasn’t even moving his hand, but the President’s breath was rough and shallow just the same. Urgent almost, like Ed was competently taking him to town just by touching him there. Like as measured as he was, as in control of things, the mere presence of Ed’s ass and Ed’s hand was enough to strain him.

 

Maybe it was true, what he said? The President made a noise pressed against him, not quite a grunt but a sort of rumble of pleasure, and at that moment it certainly felt true. He squeezed his hand and the President inhaled at it. “Gently, honey-pie,” he said. “If you do that too hard you’ll bring me all the way over.”

 

At close range like this, Ed felt the President’s voice in his chest. He wondered, stupidly, if that was why people came, to make room in their bodies for how much feeling there was to put in there. It was definitely a stupid thought, but that was partly because he struggled to really think anything.

 

“Will you let me take care of you?” the President was saying, and Ed heard that but he didn’t think he could possibly answer. He tried, but all he managed was a third, equally unimpressive “oh”, his hand still tight on the President’s dick and his free hand moving pointlessly at the President’s waist. He kissed next to the President’s mouth and thought he tasted himself.

 

“Will you, uh…” he said.

“Will I what?”

“It’s so good. It’s so good, I’m… I… god.”

“Good,” the President said. “We aim to please.”

“Put something inside me,” Ed said, suddenly.

 

It surprised him. He was used to being pressed to demand things, used to choreographed erotic begging, but he certainly wasn’t used to just blurting things out with no prompting because he wanted them. The President grinned when he said it, widely, obviously amused, and Ed immediately faltered. “You don’t have to.”

“Shh,” the President said. “It would be my sincerest pleasure. Which one’s your sex drawer.”

 

Ed didn’t bother to argue the semantics of ‘sex drawer’. He just pointed. The President leaned over him to fish out his lube then nestled back down. He rested his head on Ed’s body, looking up at him. “Do you want me to fuck you, duckling?”

Oh god. Oh god. The sound of the President saying that had shot through him like a bolt of lightning. His stomach was on fire. He shook his head. “Keep, uh… please don’t stop. But uh… use your fingers. Please.”

 

That made the President smile even wider. He kissed Ed’s stomach, stroking at it. “Polite as well as beautiful,” he said, lovingly pressing his cheek against Ed’s dick and then kissing there. “What a singular combination.”

 

It pulled hard on Ed’s heart when he said that, and the sweeter it got, the hotter it got too, and vice versa. He couldn’t parse that, didn’t analyze it, he couldn’t if he’d wanted to, but it surged up in him at those words and he kissed the President’s hand frantically and let himself be leaned back and turned over onto his front, let the President move his hips up in the air again and pull his checks apart and start tenderly licking his ass once again, and he ached from it.

 

Soon, and somehow with no break in sensation, he felt the President’s mouth move away and felt two oiled up fingers slide up inside him and his whole body clenched around them.

 

He didn’t understand how he didn’t come immediately. It felt like the last possible straw, the absolute most feeling he could possibly contain, and it made no sense to him that he could possibly feel this good and still have space to feel better. He felt his whole body stretch to contain what was happening to him and it panicked him for a hot second but then it also did the exact opposite and was absolutely calming, and that made no sense at all either. He felt desperate but also content and perfect but also urgent, and the contradiction tangled his thinking up like he was caught in a strong, warm tide, trying to swim with it and against it at the same time. Nonsensical. Utterly unimaginable.

 

He couldn’t tell if he was making sounds anymore. His mouth was open to make them, but his chest was so tight and his body was so full he didn’t know if any noise was actually coming out of him. He grabbed his dick almost reflexively and started jerking it and it felt fantastic, but specifically it felt fantastic in addition to everything else. The pressure there in addition to the third finger. In addition to the three fingers being thrust in and pulled out of him and his back and the cheeks of his ass being fondled and kissed like a butterfly landing. In addition to the President’s sudden and commanding grip on his thigh just under his ass. In addition to his own hand on his rock hard junk.

 

The glow got warmer, somehow. The room got brighter, somehow. His muscles got tighter, impossibly, and he felt everything in him pitch up sharp and hard in his gut and for one limitless second he was so perfectly, stupidly at peace with everything, and then it burst apart and his dick throbbed and spilled hot onto the bed and his stomach and everything overwhelmed him and he wanted to cry.

 

His moans must have sounded pitiful because he heard the comforting him, “oh, oh, oh darling, oh, it’s alright.” It sounded like a light source in dark water and he swam towards it. The President scooped him up with one arm, and with the other he rucked up his undershirt until he could wipe his mouth with the hem of it. When he’d done that, he pulled Ed against him, tight. Ed kissed him and kissed him and moved himself so the weight of the President’s body was on top of him, warm, safe, and heavy feeling.

 

The President was still hard. Ed felt it against his skin, pressing into the meat of his thigh. He seemed to be holding himself there, not moving, holding Ed with all his heart, but he must have wanted to move, Ed thought. It seemed like it was hard for him not to move. How sweet it was that he wasn’t. How stupid.

 

Ed pulled the President tighter and grabbed his ass in a way he thought would make his intentions clear. He’d say it if it didn’t, and he got ready to say it, but he didn’t have to, because the President, gratefully from the sound of it, took the hint and pushed himself against Ed’s body. Pushed his dick against Ed’s thigh, sticky and hot.

 

Ed moaned for him. He ground himself against him and held as tight as he could. The President pulled back enough to grab one hand onto Ed’s hip to steady himself and then he pushed into him again. He made earnest grunts, and he growled, and Ed leaned into it.

 

It didn’t last long. After a few short, fervent thrusts, Ed heard the President inhale sharply and felt him move off of him.

 

He came into his hand. Ed watched him do it. It seemed so mannerly, so polite and fussy, and just so absolutely the President in every way that it jolted through Ed’s body as hard as anything that had actually happened to him. His body still throbbed along with it, and he stared, open-mouthed, watching it happen, unable to moderate himself in any way.

 

The President noticed him. “I told you what you did to me,” he said. “You’d better not exploit that power.”

“I won’t.”

“You will,” the President said. “I can see it on your face. Well I don’t care. I’m yours. Do what thou wilt with me.” Then after a moment he added, “have you got something for…?”

 

Ed passed him a washcloth from the drawer and lay back down. He felt so fragile somehow, but even that felt perfect. He closed his eyes again.

 

He didn’t even open them when he felt the President using the washcloth to wipe the come off his stomach. He tried to, but it didn’t work. He guessed they were just closed for good now. “You could have done it on me,” he said to the President. Murmured really. “I don’t mind. It’s nice. It’s hot.”

 

“Another time I will,” the President said. “Shh now. Be quiet.”

 

Ed accepted it. He let the President do what he was doing, kissing and petting him, stroking him like a cat. Pulling a blanket over him and tucking him into it. He felt himself being kissed on the cheek and he thought if he slept he might wake up in Maine, or else that sleeping might instead be waking up, since this had been so much of a dream already.

 

More soft words. Endearments. Some of them sounded like promises. He slept anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

 

He woke up to the President going through his kitchen cupboards. He was dressed, the President, and he was corporeal, in Ed’s apartment, and that took Ed a second to adjust to.

 

He was also pissed, apparently. There was a fresh beer on the counter and a cranky look on his face.

 

Ed wanted to call out, but his throat felt scratchy from sleep. He sat up and cleared it instead. The President heard him. “Are you religiously opposed to eating?” he growled, from across the room. He didn’t sound like he was joking.

 

“What?” Ed said. He rubbed his eyes and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He smiled. He couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

The President raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you just… how many chicken breasts do you need and why don’t you have any single thing else?”

“Uh,” Ed said. “There’s some stuff in the crisper.”

“So, chicken breast and some… vegetable matter. And that’s satisfying for you? Really? How do you function on that?”

“You’re supposed to function on that,” Ed said. He tugged his shirt down and fished around for his shorts and pants. He pulled them on and came over. “It’s for lean muscle mass or something, I don’t know. I’m not that creative. There’s mac & cheese? In a box?”

 

“I saw,” the President said. “That’s an option, or it would be with some ground beef or something. Is there an onion at least? So much _rice_.”

“I’m not creative,” Ed said, again. He picked up the President’s beer and sipped it, then slipped an arm around his waist. He felt a sparkle of decadent thrill at daring to do that, and getting away with it.

 

“You’re creative in other ways,” the President said, taking the beer back. “And you’re very attractive. You’ll find that compensates for a lot.”

 

Ed didn’t think he’d ever get used to that kind of random compliment. He didn’t bother to try. “What time is it?”

“It’s dinner time,” the President said. “How are you feeling?”

“Good.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” Ed said. He hesitated. “You called me names.”

 

He regretted saying that. It made the President look awkward. Then like he was trying to pretend it didn’t affect him at all. “Yes I did,” he said, brusquely, not looking at Ed.

 

“I liked it,” Ed said. “A lot.”

 

The President looked relieved to hear it, but he didn’t seem to want to show that on his face either. “Well, good,” he said. “Do you really want that chicken?”

“I might have a frozen pizza?”

“You do have a frozen pizza. I chose not to include that on the list of options on the grounds that it’s extremely sad.”

“There’s some takeout menus in the drawer,” Ed said. “That’s the other thing I do. The Chinese place is pretty good.”

 

The President nodded. “I need some things. Something to drink besides beer. And cigarettes. I definitely need a cigarette, I think I’m getting crabby.”

“Are you?”

“Would you like to take a trip? Supplies? We’ll call for takeout on the way back. Or something like that, anyway. We should talk, I know that, but…”

“I’m operating at a calorie deficit,” Ed said.

“Yes.”

“You are too.”

“What gave it away?”

 

“Sure, okay,” Ed said. He didn’t know why he agreed so easily, why he didn’t ask for more clarification, why he didn’t ask for a more detailed plan about what was still to come. Part of him, he figured, probably just wanted to see what would happen, but it was also that he hadn’t figured out how to deal with what was happening except to accept all of it as if he was dreaming. If he’d follow the President to Maine, why not to the store? It didn’t matter in a dream.

 

He didn’t bother to change, though he did put a coat on over his sweatshirt and he did fix his hair a little, just enough to take the edge off of his sex hair look.

 

Nodding at the detail was the weirdest experience of his life to date. Besides everything else, he hadn’t realized it was late enough for Miller and Reed to come on shift, and that made him aware how profoundly he’d lost track of time. Realizing that underscored his hazy detachment even further, and he wondered abstractly, oddly uncaringly, how much the two of them had put together and how much they must already know. He figured it had to be everything by now.

 

They might have even heard him making noise while the President ate his ass. He’d certainly been loud enough. And it must be so obvious a stranger could see it. It must have been obvious in the way he moved. He must smell of the President.

 

But Ed was good at not talking, so he didn’t talk. He nodded hello, and then he sat next to the President in the back and didn’t touch him. He listened to him issuing instructions and he didn’t add anything. He knew it must be strange, maybe even uncomfortable, for Miller and Reed to be driving their off-duty boss around, knowing what they knew (or, what Ed assumed they knew), but he didn’t know where to start with that so he just didn’t. Why bother anyway?

 

The detail drove them to a convenience store, and President started to get out. Miller stopped him. “Sir,” he said, “we’ll need to sweep the store before you enter.”

 

The practicalities of the job, along with the shock of cold air from the door opening reminded Ed that on some level he was still living on planet Earth. That was disconcerting for a second. Perhaps for the President too, Ed thought, because he seemed to blink and fluff himself up. “Is that really necessary?” he said, prissily. He needed cigarettes. He really did. He might also be suffering from post-coital crankiness because, Ed remembered again, and it infused him hotly and blissfully, they’d pretty much just fucked.

 

“It’s the protocol, sir,” Miller said.

“Well I don’t think you’ll need to do that.”

“We do, sir.”

“I’m telling you you don’t.”

“Sir,” Ed said, quietly, “they’re right, it’s the protocol.”

 

The President stared at him when Ed called him sir. Ed kept his face flat.

 

“It’s just such a pointless, needless production,” the President said. “There’s no-one here to see me, there’s nothing going on, I just need a bottle of drink and a packet of cigarettes.”

“Do you want me to go in and get them for you?” Ed said. “Or one of these guys could.”

“No, they won’t have my brand. I’ll need to look at the options myself.”

“What’s your brand?”

“They won’t have it. I need to go in.”

“They’ll have American Spirit.”

“No, the bourbon.”

“They won’t have bourbon at all,” Ed said. “You can’t buy liquor at a convenience store. We’ll go to the liquor store. Do we even need this place?”

“I’m not sure. I suppose…”

 

He hesitated for long enough for Ed to rule on it. “Okay,” he said. “Guys, do the sweep.”

 

Maybe it was something about Ed’s work voice, but the President grunted and let them do it. It didn’t take long anyway. Within minutes they were lead into the empty store. Ed only had time to grip his fingers for a second in the dark car. He almost expected to be rebuffed. He wasn’t. He kept forgetting he was allowed to do that and being surprised.

 

The President, to Ed’s further surprise, didn’t head straight for the counter when they were shown in. When he saw where he was heading, though, he understood what was going on. The convenience store didn’t have a great fruit selection, but there were enough apples for him to fuss around with. Unbelievable. What a creature of habit. Everything about this was unbelievable.

 

Ed followed him. “So you need one for the morning, huh?”

 

The President made a face. Ed didn’t say anything. He waited.

 

“Are you asking me if I’m intending to stay over with you?” the President said.

“Yes,” Ed said. “Are you?”

“Your investigative skills lack finesse.”

“So?”

“Well, I am intending to, yes,” the President said. “Get me a basket.”

 

Ed did. After looking at him sternly for a moment or two, the President took it. He threw things in there with abandon. A toothbrush. A disposable razor. A comb. Floss. Deodorant. “Do you have towels?” he asked.

 

“I’m an adult man, sir,” Ed told him.

“Don’t say sir. Is that a yes or a no?”

“It’s a yes, Frank,” Ed said. “I don’t know where you’d even buy a towel at this time of night, but I have towels.”

“I could get a towel if I needed one.”

“I have towels, sir. Frank.”

“Oh, well. Good then.”

 

The way he said it made Ed smile. This whole thing made him smile. He wanted to kiss the President on the forehead and tell him to relax, because he sure looked like he could use it. He wanted to put his arm around his shoulder. “Most people have towels.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” the President said. “I’m sure you are.”

“You alright?”

“I’m just…” the President said. He grunted. “Let’s go.”

Ed nodded.                                                                           

 

At the counter, the President bought cigarettes and a lighter and asked where the nearest liquor store was. The clerk answered nervously. He seemed to tremble at the whole situation. Ed didn’t know if that was the President or it was Reed, standing beside the counter with a gun on his hip. Ed made small talk with Reed to try to diffuse things. “You need anything while we’re here?”

“No, sir,” Reed said.

 

Ed almost said that off the clock, he could just be Ed if Reed wanted. But then he didn’t. “Eventful shift?”

“No, sir. You know how it is. This is our excitement for the evening.”

 

Ed smiled. “You know I’m on leave?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Means I’m not going to be looking at your reports. But you can still call up if you need backup tonight.”

“We’ll call operations for backup, sir. If they let you take leave you should take it and run.”

 

Ed snorted. “Fair. You got any coming up?”

“Summer.”

“Shit,” Ed said.

 

He wanted to ask another question. He wanted to ask what Reed thought about all this. If he and Miller had been talking about it. He didn’t ask though. He knew they had been. He didn’t want to hear about it. He realized he didn’t have to hear about it.

 

The President lit a cigarette in the car. He definitely wasn’t supposed to do that. Ed supposed he was taking advantage, and the detail was letting him take advantage, of his out-of-office protectee status. Either that or they figured that tolerating it was easier than arguing with him. They weren’t wrong, in Ed’s experience. And smoking seemed to ease his general agitation, or slightly anyway. Perhaps he really had been crabby from nicotine withdrawal, just like he’d said he was.

 

Ed had no idea why that should induce such a feeling of tenderness in him. He guessed it might be as simple as the fact it was a vulnerability, and that he could see it, so he felt defensive of it.

 

“Where’s your Chinese place?” the President said, abruptly, interrupting Ed’s fond staring.

“Is that what you want to eat?”

 

“I just don’t care, Edward,” the President said. Ed wondered if Reed and Miller had heard the President dropping his first name like that, had noticed it, wondered if the President had been deliberate in his saying it. He was pretty sure they had heard it. He made his face impassive again and waited.

 

“I don’t want to have to sweep the place again,” the President said. “It’s needless. It takes too much time.”

“I can just go in,” Ed said. “Nobody’ll recognize me. Just tell me what you want.”

“I don’t know, I don’t care, a pork thing?”

                                                                                    

I’ll give you a pork thing, Ed almost said, before he remembered they weren’t alone. Then he noticed how tired the President looked and almost brushed his face with his hand or gripped his arm before, again, remembering they weren’t alone.

“I can pick something.”

“Would you?”

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“We’ll be home soon,” Ed said. He tried to say it gently, like saying it was the touch he couldn’t do.

 

“Good,” the President said. “Where is it?”

“It’s on my street,” Ed said. “I’ll point it out. You can go get your bourbon while I’m doing it. It’ll be a multi-operational mission, sir.”

The President’s mouth twitched. “Fine.”

 

They dropped him off. Standing back from the counter and reading the menu, Ed thought about how easy it had been to include the President in what he’d meant by ‘home’. He’d done that reflexively and he felt worried about that for a second, because it felt too fast or the wrong order of events or something, but then he stopped. The whole dream-like fog to the situation settled back around him like a downy quilt and he couldn’t get worried about anything. Even if he tried.

 

How odd that was. It felt like being someone else. He ordered food, he waited, he read the paper, he texted the President when he was done, and they picked him up, and the whole time he was someone else.

 

Before getting out of the car at Ed’s apartment he handed a box of wontons and a couple of sodas into the front. “You know we’re not supposed to eat on duty,” Miller said.

“It’s fine,” Ed said. “I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.”

 

After a minute, they nodded. There was quite a lot of solemn agreement in that nod. “Thanks sir.”

“Thank _you_ ,” Ed said.

 

The President waited for him with barely disguised impatience, so he left it there. He took the bags and followed him up the stairs. Inside, he put everything on the counter and set about pouring the President a drink. He didn’t ask if he wanted one. He didn’t ask if he was okay again. He knew he wouldn’t want to answer any of that. He just wiped a glass and opened the bottle while the President paced the length of Ed’s counter.

 

“You want a plate?” Ed said, handing the drink over. The President accepted it without acknowledgement and took a sip.

 

“I don’t care,” he said. “No, in fact, no, I do care, and it’s a no. It’s in cartons for a reason. Let’s take it to bed as is.”

“To bed?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

It took Ed a second to register that. “You really want to eat Chinese food out of the carton in my bed?”

“Is that alright with you? You don’t have a no food in bed policy or anything?”

“Yeah no I don’t have any… bed policies…”

“Well?”

“It’s fine, I just thought you’d…”

“Are you going to drink some of this? You can, you should.”

“Sure, I’m just… I didn’t really picture…”

 

“I cannot be bothered,” the President said. “I positively cannot be bothered with anything except lying down and eating, and if you have any television show or film you’d like to watch, it would be a welcome addition. This day is over now, Edward. I’m ruling on it. I’m tired.”

 

Ed smiled. “So, no plate?”

“Did you not hear me?”

“Do you need another cigarette?”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” Ed said. He poured a drink. He picked up the food.

 

The President had already taken himself to bed. He took his shoes off, climbed onto it, put pillows behind him, fussed with them. He looked, Ed thought, like a sturdy little chicken making a nest. It tugged on his heartstrings in a way that stupefied him and he decided not to worry about the déclassé nature of the situation. If it had been that long since the President had paid rent, it’d probably been long enough since he’d eaten Chinese food in bed that it, too, was a fun novelty.

 

He played the first episode of _Game of Thrones_ on his laptop while they were eating. It seemed stupid to do it that way when he had a TV, but they’d have to sit on the sofa to watch it on the TV, and anyway, if they were going to act like college students in a dorm they might as well go the whole way. The President seemed to tolerate it. He didn’t say much initially, but towards the end of the first episode he said, “did you know I got advance copies of this?”

“Yes,” Ed said.

“I never watched it. I might have watched it if I’d known about the tits. This… relaxed attitude towards incest makes that slightly less appealing, but nonetheless. It’s period accurate for royalty, I suppose.”

 

Ed laughed. “There’s gay stuff in it too.”

“How gay?”

“At least kissing.”

“Very good.”

“Renly and Loras.”

“Which ones are they?”

“You haven’t met them yet.”

“Point them out when I do. Come here and try this,” he said, holding out a piece of pork with his chopsticks.

 

Ed had to look at his face to see if he meant for him to take it by biting it, and apparently he did. “Nice?” he said, once he had.

“I’m too tired to make a joke about putting meat in your mouth so just pretend I did.”

“Duly noted.”

“And yes it’s very nice. Thank you.”

 

He really did seem tired. Ed was struck by how much it made him want to pet him. He wondered if he’d ever stop being struck by that, assuming this strange and impossible night turned out to be real and they really would be moving states together. He didn’t feel ready to count on that.

 

Still, he thought, he might actually be allowed to pet him now. Under the circumstances. Within the new rules of this day’s events. He decided to chance it. He reached out his hand and touched the side of the President’s face. It was soft and ever so slightly scratchy, and warm. He stroked his hair. Fine. Soft.

 

The President watched him with wide, wary eyes. He had been smiling, but now it held still on his face. Not exactly frozen, just still. Ed hesitated.

 

“It’s alright,” the President said. “I’m sorry, I’m just…”

“No, it’s okay, I…”

“You’re allowed, Edward, I just…”

“If you don’t like it I don’t have to.”

“I’m just adjusting,” the President said. “Just… adjusting.”

 

Ed figured that was a good enough answer. He went back to his own carton, as if he wasn’t tingling inside and all over. “Wait aren’t you supposed to take some stuff at night?” he said. “You know, for your… you know, for your health.”

 

The President gave him a look. “Theoretically.”

“How theoretically?”

“Have you timed out my medications?”

“Yes,” Ed said. “I’m aware of things that are life or death matters for you. That’s my job.”

 

The President laughed. “That’s extremely unsettling.”

 

Ed smiled, but he kept looking at the President and the President noticed. “Anyway,” he said. “I can skip a night.”

“Can you though?”

“Yes. One night won’t hurt.”

“Who says so?”

“Common sense says so, Mrs. Morel. Just relax and let me eat my dinner.”

“Yeah, but what does your doctor say.”

“He says ‘shut up, Edward’.”

 

Ed ignored that. “I’ll go get them for you if you don’t want to.”

“You will do no such thing. We’re eating. Stop interrupting.”

“I won’t take long.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, Edward. If you _must_ , you may ask the _detail_ to collect my things from the hotel and bring them here, but _after_ dinner, and only if you’re really that determined to be a nag. Which will get extremely boring extremely fast, so just keep that in mind.”

 

I am that determined to be a nag, Ed wanted to say. But instead he said nothing. If he’d said it, he might have admitted why he was so determined and that was too soppy to say aloud. And besides, saying nothing was far more effective. He just kept staring.

 

Eventually, the President rolled his eyes. “Eat your food,” he said, gesturing with his chopsticks. “Then you can do whatever you like.”

“I’ll ask the detail.”

“Alright.”

“Look, can I just do it now? I’m just going to…”

“Fine. For fuck’s sake.”

“I guess it was kind of pointless getting all of those toiletries.”

“Alright, Edward. Shut up.”

“Hey, shall I have them get towels?”

“ _Edward_. _”_

 

Ed smirked. He leaned over the President for paper and a pen. “Write me a quick list, I’ll get it done.”

 

The President drew in a long sigh through his nose, but he put down his carton and obliged. “Hurry up,” he said, when he handed the list to Ed “I’m starting to get interested in Game of Swords Tits. I won’t keep it paused for long.”

 

Ed took him at his word. He jogged down the stairs at speed.

 

Downstairs, and out the front, he tapped on the detail car window. “Hey,” he said and Reed wound it down and looked up at him.

“Everything alright up there, sir?”

“I need to get some things for the President from his hotel. Can you have that done for me?”

“Of course, sir.”

 

It occurred to Ed, again, to tell him to leave off the sir, but he didn’t this time either. Rank was functional, even off duty. It saved everybody from having to acknowledge anything about was going on here, i.e., that Ed was unapologetically fucking the former President and ordering them around about it. That being the case he was happy to keep to formality.

 

“He gave me a list,” Ed said. “I’m going to give you the list and I’m also going give you my number, in case you don’t have it. It’s there, on the back.”

“It’s in the database anyway, sir.”

“Good,” Ed said. “I don’t have my radio on, obviously, so call me if you need to. There’s a bag on the list, put the things in the bag, and bring the bag back here.”

 

Reed scanned the list then handed it over to Miller. “Straight forward enough, sir,” Miller said. Reed got out of the car and Miller drove off.

 

“How many perimeter agents?” Ed asked, as Reed shuffled himself on the pavement. Ed wondered if he was cold.

“Two, sir.”

“You feel comfortable with three of you for the duration?”

“Backup unit’s not far away, sir. We’ve got operations. I’m good.”

 

Ed nodded. “How’s things?”

“We’ll, uh, we’ll need to do a sight check on the former President, sir,” he said. “If uh. Well, if he’s going to be staying over.”

 

Ed didn’t argue. He didn’t explain, but he didn’t argue. “That’s fine,” he said. “Do it when you bring the bag up.”

 

The President came out of the bathroom drying his hands just as Ed came back into the apartment. It stopped Ed in his tracks. He hadn’t forgotten the President was there, of course he hadn’t, there was no way to forget that. But he also hadn’t excepted him to have just been casually existing in his absence, using Ed’s bathroom, walking around in his sock feet, going about his life like a person. That was momentarily arresting.

 

“They’re getting your stuff,” he said, officiously, to cover it over.

 

The President nodded. “Alright. Can we relax now?”

“Well um,” Ed said. “They need to do a sight check.”

“Of what?”

“That you’re alive in here.”

“They don’t usually do that when I stay somewhere.”

“That’s because we’d usually check a place before you went in it, sir. It’s not regulation. That they didn’t, I mean. That someone didn’t come in when you came up. But it’s my place so I guess it flies.”

 

His saying ‘sir’ again made the President’s mouth quirk. This was maybe the one situation where rank didn’t make things easier. “Is that so?” he asked.

 

“Yeah,” Ed said. “There’s… well, there’s protocol. I guess I have a standing with… it’s still not really acceptable though.”

“I didn’t give them a choice, Edward. But yes, you did seem to have a certain amount of staff cachet, as I would hope you would.”

“Well, okay. But still.”

“But still protocol still dictates that they must check the room to see you haven’t murdered me?”

“Yes,” Ed said.

“Should I make the bed?”

“Probably,” Ed said. “I mean. Unless you want to have the conversation right now.”

“And what conversation is that?”

 

Ed took a deep breath. “The conversation about what’s happening here and what we’re planning to do about that.”

 

“I see,” the President said. He wasn’t quite smiling, but he looked to Ed like he wanted to. “And what is your opinion on that matter, Special Agent?”

 

“Okay,” Ed said, “let me explain the situation as it stands. At this point there’s still plausible deniability. Just. Nobody has seen us… engaged in any kind of notable adult activity. We didn’t kiss or hold hands in front of them or any of that stuff, so.”

 

“A missed opportunity,” the President said. He definitely sounded amused. Ed ignored him.

 

“They’ve had to report you’re up here,” he said. “That and that they took us for Chinese food, and once they check you they’ll have to report that they saw you in this room and not, uh, dead or in a hostage situation. But that’s all of it. That’s all they’ll have had to say so far. Essentially that you’re staying with a friend.”

 

“A friend,” the President said. He’d started pouring himself another drink. “Do you want one?”

Ed nodded. “Yeah. Please.”

“A very good friend indeed.”

 

“Okay,” Ed said. He wasn’t interested in that joke under the circumstances. He went on. “So. If you don’t want to say anything tonight then you can’t give them anything they have to report. Like I said, the denial has to be plausible and it’s not… you can’t require them to not report something they see. I won’t ask them to lie.”

 

“How beautifully McCarthy Era this all is,” the President drawled. He was still smiling, but now it looked sarcastic. Ed thought he understood that. It was hard to make a decision and then have to wait for everything else in the world to play catch up. That was hard for anyone, let alone someone like the President.

 

“Probably don’t talk too much about McCarthy for the time being,” Ed said. “Just probably for the moment.”

 

The President shot him a sharp look. “Just what are you insinuating?”

 

“Nothing at all, sir,” Ed said, making his face as expressionless as he could.

 

The President didn’t buy it, but he didn’t keep on about it either. “Go on,” he said, handing Ed his drink, and Ed cleared his throat and did.

 

“They probably know what’s going on,” he said. “They’re not stupid. Martinez and Clark are on tomorrow a.m. and they’ll need to check too, and they’ll know when they do that, if they don’t already know, which they probably do too. But they can’t be asked to prove it.”

“I see.”

“They wouldn’t want to anyway. We don’t… we try not to over-report on what a protectee does unless it’s relevant to their protection. We don’t editorialize as a rule. People tend not to trust you if they think you’re judging them. Makes the job harder to do.”

“Is that so?”

“Sorry. I’m over-explaining. This is more technical than I need to be. I just…”

 

The President didn’t argue, but he didn’t agree either. He’d put his drink on the coffee table and was following it up by transferring the boxes of food from the bed. It was fastidious and domestic. Ed supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised by it. He remembered the President picking up his clothes in New Hampshire and how neatly he’d done that.

 

“But the fact that you’re an agent doesn’t complicate that?” the President asked, depositing boxes and returning for a second pass.

 

Ed shook his head. “It will, but… not right now, not tonight. I mean unless…”

“You trust them?”

“I trust my people, sir.”

“Frank.”

“Sorry. I’m trying, I promise.”

“I know, darling. Go on.”

 

“There’s a deadline though,” Ed said. “If I haven’t come forward by the end of my leave next week, there’ll be a definite reporting issue and it’ll seem like I’ve been lying intentionally. I mean, I will have been lying intentionally. And that’s bad for you because it could trigger another investigation and it’s bad for me because… it’s just bad for me.”

 

The President looked like he was thinking things over. “How do you know who’s on the detail tomorrow?” he asked.

“I wrote the roster.”

“I didn’t know you did any of these things. Staying with you is really an education.”

“Well, why would you, sir? Frank. If you knew what we were doing, we’d be doing it wrong. It’s the Secret Service.”

“Not the Obvious Service,” the President said.

Ed laughed. “No,” he said. “Not the Obvious Service.”

 

By now the President had also pulled the covers up on the bed so it didn’t look like people had just been sitting in it. He brought the laptop over too. Everything looked innocent now. Slightly messy, but innocent. It occurred to Ed that he’d done nothing to help and he felt embarrassed. The President didn’t seem to mind though. “What would you like to do?” he asked.

 

It took Ed a second to get it. “You mean… about… telling them?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean. Would you like to do it tonight?”

“It’s up to you, sir.”

 

He winced when he realized he’d said sir again. The President didn’t mention it. He did notice it though, Ed could see that, but it seemed like he didn’t mind that either. He smiled. Fondly. Tenderly, even. “No, it’s up to you,” he said, in a soft, conciliatory voice. “I think I can probably tolerate anything following recent events. It’s you I’m concerned about. It’s your job. If you’d like to do it tonight then we will.”

 

He sounded so sure. He really sounded like he thought this was real. Like they were really a… what? A couple? An Item that was moving to Maine and would actually need to make announcements about it? How totally absurd.

 

It was so absurd that for a second it was hard for Ed to think it over. He made himself do it anyway. “If I was being sensible I’d say yes.”

“But?”

“But I just… I want to…”

“Let things sink in?”

 

“Yeah,” Ed said. “Is that… is that okay with you? I just…”

“Yes,” the President said, positioning himself on the sofa. He patted the seat next to him, but Ed hesitated in coming over.

 

“Are you alright?” the President asked him. “You seem… is this alright for you? Perhaps it would be better if I went. I didn’t anticipate all of this… bureaucracy.”

 

Ed couldn’t relax. He thinned his lips. Shrugged his shoulders. Stepped his feet. “No, don’t. I just. Didn’t read this part of the manual I guess. I’m just. Thinking it through.”

“You and me both.”

“Don’t… I really don’t want you to… sorry I made a thing out of your meds.”

 

That made the President laugh, for some reason. “Never mind,” he said. “It had to come up sometime.”

“I feel like I… got in the way of stuff.”

“They’d have come up to check anyway, wouldn’t they? I’d rather it be like this, where we’ve been able to talk it over and do things the way we want.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. You really wouldn’t rather I go?”

“No, see, that’s what I mean. It’s the exact opposite.”

 

“Oh, darling,” the President said. “You’re wound up about nothing. Everything I’ve said now has been a courtesy to you, it’s not because I want to go. I’m happy to put on a performance but I can’t wait to be back in bed like civilized people. I mean it, Edward. I’m serious.”

 

The way he said that was so reassuring. His voice was full of low amusement but also somehow an assumption of the world in which he and Ed were the only two people in it. Ed felt that dreamlike acceptance creeping over him again. Soothing him, fuzzing everything up. Nothing else really mattered, he thought. Not any of that practical stuff. Not compared to this right now. He came over and sat down and the President folded him into his arms and Ed let him. He let himself be cuddled. It was like being hugged by an amiable bear. He shut his eyes.

 

“It’s alright,” the President said, softly.

“Is it?”

“It must be so difficult, worrying this much about everything.”

“It’s my…”

“It’s your job, I know,” the President said, cutting him off. “Shh.”

“I guess partly it’s that I don’t even know what it is we’d tell them.”

“That you’re moving to Maine with me.”

“I guess that’s all it would have to be, right?”

 

“Yes, I think so,” the President said. “But let’s let it settle. How about some off-protocol fondling in our limited privacy window? We’d better get in some kissing and handholding, don’t you think?”

 

Ed laughed. The President kissed him.

 

The tense preparation for the sight check massively outweighed the amount of time and energy the sight check actually took. Miller came in with the bag, he walked a circuit of Ed’s apartment, he checked the windows to see where the exact access was, he looked in the bathroom, and that was pretty much it. The size of Ed’s apartment meant it took mere minutes, during which Ed and the President sat on the sofa and the President held an impressively casual pose. “Are you sure I’m not an imposter?” he asked Miller, deadpan. “Do you really know it’s me?”

 

If Ed had been allowed, he would have punched the President in the shoulder for that. He could see Miller was struggling to respond, and Ed knew why. He was trying to sort through what was appropriate and what wasn’t. It was the exact kind of jokey question you had to get really good at answering within the bounds of the job. You weren’t allowed to be too familiar, but you weren’t allowed to piss the protectee off either. Unless you were Ed, Ed thought, because he’d somehow managed to do both in his tenure. He figured the blowjobs probably helped.

 

In the end Miller didn’t say anything. Smart choice, Ed thought. “Morning detail will check again then, Sir,” Miller said, and Ed thanked him. After Ed stared at him for a second or two, the President thanked him as well. Then, as soon as the door closed, the second the lock clicked, he leaned over and kissed Ed on the mouth. “That was fun.”

 

His face was lit up, his expression made it seem like he was about to start giggling. Something about that was unsettling, Ed thought. Maybe just a little unstable. “What?” Ed said.

 

“Sneaking around like this. It’s exciting,” the President said. He wrapped his arms around Ed’s neck and pulled Ed onto him. “Edward,” he said. “Edward, Edward, Edward.”

“I don’t think we’re being that sneaky.”

“Shh,” the President said. “Don’t ruin it for me. I’m having fun.”

 

Ed figured maybe he just needed to factor in being tired, and the giddiness of the situation. He let the President fondle him for a minute. Then he got up and got the President’s bag and brought it over. The President made a face. “And now the fun’s over, I see.”

 

Ed didn’t bother to answer that. Instead, he just held out the bag and waited until he took it. When he did take it, Ed got him a glass of water, sat down again, and watched. The President rolled his eyes, but eventually he rooted through his bag and took his pills. “Happy now?”

“Yes,” Ed said.

 

He didn’t know why, but saying that made the President laugh. He looked at Ed with such fondness. He put out his hand and cupped Ed’s cheek and kissed him. “You’re just so sweet.”

“Am I?”

“Very.”

“Thanks.”

“Even your pickiness is sweet.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“Are you tired?”

“I don’t know,” Ed said. “I feel…”

“You look extremely anxious, if you don’t mind me saying that.”

“Well, yeah, I guess I feel extremely anxious.”

 

The President made a fond, shrugging sort of face at him. He reached out his hand again and stroked the side of his face. Ed closed his eyes. Something about being touched like this was absurdly soothing. Automatically, even. He wanted to press himself into the President’s body again.

 

“Should we talk?” the President said. “Would that help? Do we need to…”

“Fuck no,” Ed said. “God, I just want to go to bed. I don’t know if I can sleep but I want to go to bed.”

“Well, shall we then?”

“I don’t want to keep you up.”

 

“I don’t know if I can sleep either,” the President said. “Events are… well, they’re events. They’re a lot of events.”

“I guess neither of us have to be anywhere.”

“Yes, we could stay up all night watching _Game of Thrones_ if we wanted.”

“I can’t believe I’m watching _Game of Thrones_ in bed with you.”

“I’m glad it’s such a novelty.”

“I just always… I figured you’d like it.”

 

“I’m trying to figure out who’s who,” the President said. “For the Wars of the Roses. That’s what it is, isn’t it? There’s an obvious Stark/York and Lancaster/Lannister thing with it, geographically. And Ned is definitely the Duke of York.”

“Okay,” Ed said.

“It might not end well for Ned,” the President continued. “The Duke got his head put on a pike for all his honorable stoicism. I’m not holding out a lot of hope for Ned. Does he… No, don’t tell me.”

 

Ed smiled. He didn’t have a lot to say, but the diversion felt calming. It felt like the President was taking charge, sorting things out somehow. His hand rested on Ed’s shoulder and he looked like he was watching Ed’s face, anticipating. “I won’t,” Ed said.

 

“But,” the President said, “I don’t know how they square that with the fact that the Starks keep these ‘old ways’, this Pagan stuff. That says to me more of a... it’s not a Lancaster thing really, but it could a Tudor thing, a reference to being Welsh.”

“Oh yeah?”

“They were never fully colonized by the Anglo-Saxons, not really. Though the North of England is inherently wild. Out On The Wild and Windy Moors, et cetera. I’m not explaining that properly. Why don’t you put on whatever you’re going to put on?”

“For bed?”

“Yes, darling, for bed.”

“Okay.”

 

Ed picked up the food containers and threw them in the trash. The President unpacked his pajamas and shook them out over the coffee table before changing into them. He folded his clothes back into his bag as he spoke. “Henry VI was Lancaster on his mother’s side,” he said. “Henry Tudor, first Tudor Monarch, marries Elizabeth of York, end of the war. That’s why I’m telling you that. That’s also why it’s confusing. There are a lot of characters he could be. I suppose it remains to be seen. Perhaps if Joffrey and Sansa do get married, but…”

 

“Okay, I get you,” Ed said. The President was, he thought, quite surprisingly fucking earnest about _Game of Thrones_. It made him want to laugh. He took off his sweats and changed his t-shirt and the President pulled back the covers for him then patted them down around him and brought him a drink, monologuing about _Game of Thrones_ the whole time. Watching him pad propitiously around his apartment gave Ed a warm feeling. He was glad he’d made him have a bag sent over. He seemed happier with a bag. He seemed comfortable in pajamas.

 

“Tyrion’s Richard III though,” the President said. “Unequivocally. But that’s York.” He punctuated the point with a sip of his own drink. He put the glass down and placed his hands on the kitchen counter and leaned on it. “Is there anything else you want while I’m here?”

“No, I’m okay.”

“I suppose if you do later it wouldn’t exactly be difficult to get.”

“No,” Ed said.

“That’s the advantage of a small apartment.”

“Yes.”

 

The President nodded. He picked his glass up, examined and then carefully wiped the counter, then came over and got into bed too.

“So, Richard III,” he said.

“Uh huh,” Ed said, pulling the laptop onto his lap.

“Tyrion’s a slightly more sympathetic version, but still. Are you interested in this?”

“Sure.”

“Crippled. Clever. Accused of all kinds of crimes. Everybody’s favorite anti-hero. Shakespeare did a good job demonizing him, but people do adore demons.”

“Yep,” Ed said. “Should I play again?”

“Yes, go on,” the President said, but he didn’t seem like he was finished. Something in the way he held himself. Ed waited.

 

“It’s not exact,” the President said. “Is it supposed to be exact? Because it isn’t.”

“No idea. Inspired by, maybe.”

 

The President looked like he was thinking about that. He took another sip of his drink. He shifted closer to Ed and Ed’s heart lurched. Pleasantly, if it was possible for a heart to lurch pleasantly. It felt like a terrifying thrill. It felt that even more like that when the President laid his head against Ed’s shoulder.

 

Ed’s skin was tingling again and his heart was thudding. He couldn’t believe a minute of this, and yet here it was happening, the President leaning on him in his bed so they could watch _Game of Thrones_. “Richard Burbage,” the President said, as if everything was normal, “the first actor ever to play Richard III, part of Shakespeare’s original company, he used to get groupies who wanted him to stay in character.”

“Huh,” Ed said. “Should I play?”

“People love demons.”

“Yeah. Do you want me to play the show?”

“Yes, go ahead.”

“Are you going to keep talking?”

“No, I’m done.”

“I can wait.”

“I’m done.”

 

He was, apparently, because he didn’t say anything else after that, except the occasional acknowledgement of something on the screen. He kissed Ed’s neck. Ed cuddled up against him and felt the warmth of his body and the softness of it. He’d seen all of this before, but that wasn’t why he barely took it in. He felt the President’s breathing against him. He felt his fine hair against his cheek, his hand on his stomach absently brushing there. It still seemed impossible to be feeling that here, in his apartment.

 

Before long, he heard the President snoring low and deep against him. It was so close he felt it reverberating in his own chest. He really did sound like a bear. Ed almost didn’t want to move, in case he disturbed him, but he couldn’t sleep like that, so he eased himself out. He shut the laptop and put it on the floor. The President shifted and shuffled down onto his pillows, but he didn’t wake up. Ed curled up next to him. He put his arm over his chest. He felt so warm.

 

He didn’t know exactly how long it took him to fall asleep, but he did. He didn’t dream.


	4. Chapter 4

In the morning, he had a call from HQ. His heart thudded audibly while he listened, but it turned out to be nothing. Next time it wouldn’t be, but for now he could take a breath. He tried to make himself do that. They needed him to make sense of one of his cases, that was all it was.

 

The President had woken up at the sound of Ed’s working his phone and he looked over inquisitively, rolling onto his back.

 

“I have to go into work,” Ed said. “That was them.”

“I thought you were on leave.”

“I am. But I had a bank fraud thing crossing over with a suspicious persons thing and I handed both cases over to Ward and apparently he can’t figure out what the fuck he’s doing.”

 

“Excuse me?” the President said. He looked rumpled and sweet and scratchy and Ed suddenly remembered who he was talking to and everything that had happened yesterday thudded into his chest like a cannonball. He stuttered from the force of it. “It’s uh. We do… you probably know… general investigative work… uh, hi.”

 

“Hi,” the President said, smiling. “Good morning.”

“You sleep okay?”

“Just fine.”

“I didn’t… do anything weird?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, I just don’t usually let people… stay over…”

 

He kicked himself for saying that. The President didn’t need to hear about the seedy details of his private life. What was he going to do for an encore, show off his Grindr profile? But the President didn’t seem bothered. His face made it seem like he thought Ed was especially cute for it. He smiled. “Well, I’m flattered you’ve made an exception for me,” he said, stroking a hand up and down Ed’s arm.

 

That was bizarre, considering he was the former President of the United States and Ed was Ed and there was nothing to be flattered about. “Okay,” Ed said, because he didn’t know what else to say. “Anyway, I should get ready.”

 

“Come here first,” the President said. Ed did. The President put his arms around him and pulled him back down into the bed. “It’s very nice of you to let me stay,” he said, stroking the side of Ed’s face.

“It’s fine.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” the President repeated, in an indulgent, slightly sarcastic tone.

“Yeah,” Ed said. “It’s fine.”

The President frowned. “Edward,” he said, softly, “are you alright?”

 

Ed didn’t know what to say to that either, so he just buried his face against the President’s shoulder. Everything felt and smelled very good in there, but it wasn’t enough to distract him. “I’m just not used to people staying,” he said. It came out muffled. He moved his face out again to where he could see.

 

“Do you want me to go?” the President asked, in that same, quiet voice.

“I really don’t. I’m just. Sorry. Not used to people staying. But I really don’t.”

“Alright. Alright,” the President said, stroking him again. He said it reassuringly. And it was, strangely, actually reassuring.

 

Ed felt himself relax a little bit. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten so tense so quickly. The call, probably. And the cold light of the morning giving the surreality of the President’s presence a jarring edge. God, he was really here. He couldn’t make that real with any amount of effort.

 

And talking to him about things he didn’t usually ever talk about, he realized. He and the President had had exactly two conversations about the rest of Ed’s private business before now, and they’d both been about testing and condom use, and they’d both been about two sentences long. Ed had never elaborated further than that, but now circumstances were elaborating for him. It felt exposing.

 

He was grateful, in a way, that he’d have some time by himself today. To catch his breath properly. To think. As much as he could think, at work, while explaining something that should be obvious, to someone who shouldn’t need it explained.

 

“What is that face?” the President asked him.

“What face?”

“That surly little face you’re doing.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. Is it work? Surely you don’t have to go.”

“Yeah you’d think so,” Ed said. “I’m on leave. And my notes are fine. It’s a complicated investigation, but my notes are fine.”

“How frustrating. I’m sure your notes are very good.”

 

Ed snorted. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know,” Ed said. “I shouldn’t tell you this stuff. It’s so… it must be boring.”

 

The President took a long breath, like he was collecting his thoughts. “I like it, actually. I find I’m liking everything about this,” he said.

“About what?”

“About being here, with you.”

“Eating Chinese food in bed in my shitty apartment and listening to me talk about work.”

“Your apartment is a lovely little place.”

“It’s fine, I guess?”

“It’s adorable. And charming. Which isn’t surprising, really, considering its charming and attractive tenant.”

 

Ed snorted again. “It’s a cheap place close to work. Lucky, considering. I’ve had it since the cops.”

“It’s what you’ve done with it.”

“I put furniture in it.”

“Edward,” the President said, “it’s delightful. Being here is delightful. Stop arguing.”

“I’m not arguing, I’m just…”

“You’re just a nightmare in the morning, apparently. Be quiet.”

 

Ed felt himself flushing. A familiar combination of irritation and arousal. “Yes, sir,” he said.

The President gave him a look. “I’ll make you some coffee in a minute, but for now, shut up.”

 

Ed did. The President pulled him into a hug and rubbed his back again. It was surprising how comforting that was. He felt it soothing him instantly, like a switch had been flipped. Another Pavlovian reaction, just like a dog.

 

“How long do you expect to be at work?” the President asked him.

“Can I talk now?”

“Yes, smartass.”

 

Ed smiled. “I’m just going to file my leave to be from tomorrow. There’s no way I’ll be done before four.”

“There’s really nobody else who can manage this?”

“It’s my notes. And I kind of… left in a rush.”

“Stormed out, you mean.”

“I didn’t storm.”

“You did. It was very dramatic.”

“I admit I rushed.”

“Yes, darling. What are you going to tell everybody? About your plans.”

 

Ed bit his lip. “I think I need to think some more about… what exactly I’m going to say before I do that.”

“I think that’s wise.”

“I’m sorry for… I promise I’m not stalling.”

“I know you’re not. Will I have to say anything initially?”

“Don’t know. Probably pretty soon. They’ll want you to confirm I didn’t fuck up at work.”

“Well sometimes you did f…”

 

“Okay,” Ed said. “That’s uh. That’s funny but um. Could you please not say that in this context seeing as it’s my, uh, my entire career on the line here?”

 

“I’m joking,” the President said. “You were a consummate professional, and if and when it’s required, I’ll make that known.”

“Thanks. That’ll help.”

“What could happen to you?”

“Really don’t know,” Ed said. “I guess it could be pretty bad. I guess it depends on how much I lie.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I wasn’t a consummate professional. I wasn’t exactly doing my job in New Hampshire, was I?”

 

The President frowned. “You don’t have to tell them that. That’s our business.”

“That’s the entire point though. That’s exactly what I’m supposed to tell them. And I’m not going to, but that’s exactly the problem if they can prove I lied. Or if they want to prove I lied, because it wouldn’t be hard to. One interview with the hotel staff from New Hampshire should do it.”

“Would they want to?”

“My people wouldn’t. Or at least I hope they wouldn’t. But if your… investigative committee… the President’s committee… If the, uh, the Fir… Mrs. Underwood’s…”

 

He thought he felt the President tense. He couldn’t be sure, but he definitely heard him take a deliberate breath. “You’re worried about Claire.”

“Not exactly, but…”

“Claire would never say a word to hurt you, Edward. Never. No matter what she thinks of me.”

“Do you know that?”

“Ask her yourself if you don’t believe me.”

“I can’t just… call the President.”

“You can call my wife. If I text her, she’ll take your call, I promise. If I promise her you won’t hand the phone to me.”

“I’m sorry,” Ed said.

“Hush. That’s not important right now.”

“Sorry. I just…”

“Alright,” the President said, sharply.

 

Ed got the message. “Sorry.”

 

The President didn’t acknowledge Ed’s apology, but he did start stroking his back again. Ed wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Part of him wanted to broach the subject properly, to respond to the fact that the President had all but snapped at him, to say that he couldn’t move to Maine with him without having at least one conversation about his wife, but that felt like much too much on top of everything else right now. It hurt his head to think about it. Because of that, he accepted the stroking and let it work on him.

 

“So you go to work today,” the President said, back to normal now apparently. “And for now you’re just going to work, regular work and leave starts tomorrow. And then tonight, or tomorrow morning, or soon enough anyway, we can talk about what you’re going to say. If you want input on that. It would probably be smart to strategize together, but it’s up to you.”

“No, I agree.”

“Alright. And then we’ll talk to the detail about how we’re going to proceed, and then we do proceed.”

“Yes, sir,” Ed said. “Uh. Sorry. God. I’m never gonna…”

“I don’t know,” the President said. “‘Sir’ has started to take on a certain amount of additional erotic frisson for me. And it was already quite favorable.”

“It’s hard to say ‘Frank’ in a sexy way,” Ed conceded.

 

The President raised an eyebrow. “Go get ready,” he said, pushing Ed over and swatting him on the butt.

 

The President made him breakfast while he was in the shower. He cut up the convenience store apple and made coffee and plain, buttered toast. Because that’s what there was. He complained about it. “I’ll need to go out again. You don’t have anything. Where are your eggs? What do you eat? No wonder you’re so skinny. You don’t even have peanut butter.”

 

“I’m not that skinny,” Ed said, between bites. “I’m just tall. I look skinnier than I am.”

“You’re skinny.”

“You sound like my mother.”

“Where I’m from, Edward,” the President said, “we don’t speak disparagingly about our mothers. We mind them. Call me when you’re coming home, will you?”

 

Ed was suddenly aware of the fact that the President had said ‘home’ and also of the way he’d said it. Possessively. He hoped there was nothing too incriminating in his apartment. He knew the President well enough to know he’d definitely snoop. He tried to remember the last time he’d cleared his browser history.

 

“What are you going to do all day?” he asked him.

“Oh just things, probably. There’ll inevitably be some bit of business.”

“There’s a key in… um,” Ed said, then rummaged through the drawer to check it actually was there. “Here.”

“The key to your heart. So romantic.”

“It’s to my apartment. I’ll text you the building code.”

 

The President laughed. “Excuse me, kiss me goodbye thank you,” he said, bossily.

 

It made Ed swoon.


	5. Chapter 5

Ed was surprised by how easy it was to dive back into explaining his cases. Even pleasurable. He’d expected to be antsy and preoccupied but instead he felt warm and dopey and content, like nothing could possibly go wrong. Everything he did felt good. Explaining minutiae to Ward felt good. Pulling files and making phonecalls felt good. His stomach felt tingly and sweet and hot and he couldn’t stop smiling. It felt good to sit at his damn desk. It was ridiculous.

 

In a way, he thought, it was really just a more extreme version of his regular experience of The Day After the Night Before with the President lately, especially over the past few months. Ever since being back from New Haven things had been becoming less and less compartmentalized, less and less but also more and more ambiguous, and he’d had a lot of surreal feeling days where his professionalism floated dreamily over top of remembering being kissed, remembering being whispered to, remembering holding hands. He remembered his first night back up in the residence and how he and the President had sat next to each other and touched each other so lightly for the longest time before they’d even kissed. The day after that had felt sweet in the same kind of way.

 

He didn’t think that totally explained it though. Same sport, maybe, but a different game, because there was an urgent, electric feeling to this sweetness, where as much as he’d wanted to think things through, he couldn’t. He couldn’t think much of anything. Every movement felt buoyant and he couldn’t wait to get home.

 

Eating lunch was difficult. He couldn’t make himself settle. He gave up halfway through and called the President on the phone. “I’m gonna quit tomorrow.”

 

“Hello to you too,” the President laughed.

“I mean it,” Ed said. “I’m ready.”

“Are you not having a good day?”

“No, it’s great. There’s nothing wrong with work. I just want to… I’m just ready. I want to go to Maine with you and be your… I don’t know, your whatever. I want to go. With you. As soon as possible.”

 

“Alright,” the President said.

“Is that… good?”

“I’d be very happy for you to action coming to Maine with me and being my whatever, if that’s what you would like.”

Ed laughed. “I would. I really… I really would like it. God. How is this… how is this happening?”

 

“It’s exciting, isn’t it?” the President said. He said it softly into the phone and Ed wondered if he had company. Either way, he felt the intimacy of it all through his body.

 

“I know what you mean,” he said.

“Will we pick you up after work?”

“That’s okay.”

“Alright. But… four thirty-ish?”

 

“I’ll be home by five,” Ed said. He took a breath. “I think I…”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Ed said. What he’d wanted to say was ‘I think I already miss you’, but that was far too stupid for words.

“Oh?”

“It’s not long,” Ed said. He hung up. He went back to work. He thought about that phonecall every other minute.

 

When he did get home, the President was sitting on the fire escape, drinking bourbon, smoking, and reading Ed’s copy of _A Game of Thrones_. “I got you some sheets,” he called, when Ed came in, but he didn’t get up or come inside.

 

He had got sheets. The bed was made with hospital corners and the sheets, where Ed could see them, weren’t a color he owned.

“I already had sheets,” Ed said. He hung up his coat. He took off his tie. Unloaded his gun and put it with his badge in the drawer.

 

“Yes, but not really,” the President said. “These are better. Also, your water pressure is truly terrible. Have you spoken to your landlord about it?”

“Uh,” Ed said. “No, there’s nothing he could… really do about that? Do you, uh…”

“I’ll do it, if you like.”

“That’s not… I don’t think you need to do that.”

“So you’re just going to tolerate it? What for?”

“I’m not going to be here that much longer anyway, am I?” Ed said. He got a beer out of the fridge.

 

“That’s true,” the President said. “Still.” He finished his cigarette and then began the process of clambering back through the window. It didn’t look like the easiest thing in the world. Ed came over and took his drink and book to make it easier, but even with that help the President’s ingress wasn’t exactly graceful. The look on his face let Ed know he better not mention it.

 

Once inside and on his feet, the President took the drink back, but not the book. Ed put it down on the bedside table. “Honey, I’m home,” he said.

 

“You are,” the President said. Then he smiled. It was fond and satisfied and heart-flutteringly genuine.

 

Ed wondered how much effort it would take to segue things into kissing. “Have you been here all day?” he asked.

“That’s alright, isn’t it?”

“Yeah?”

“I went out,” the President said, “but then I came back. I got sheets, and some basic necessities you didn’t have. I got… just things, really. I didn’t know what… why are you looking at me like that?”

“So you just… went shopping and read a book?”

 

The President raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m retired now, Edward, or I’m trying to be. This is what people do what people do when they’re retired. Potter about uselessly, doing nothing in particular.”

“Are you… was it… alright?”

“Today it was. It won’t be a long-term solution, but today it fit the bill. That book’s ridiculous, but I liked it. I think I might have spoiled some of the show for myself. I haven’t got to the end though. Don’t tell me.”

 

“There’s a series,” Ed said. “There’s five. Couple more coming.”

“I don’t read much fiction anymore,” the President said. “It was a novel experience. A novel novel.”

Ed snorted. He could probably just start kissing him, he suspected.

 

“I got you a sweater too,” the President said. “I don’t know why. For the Maine weather, I imagine.”

“I have sweaters.”

“Well, I got you another one. Stop protesting everything I do for you. Your honor is assured, Miss Bennett, we’ve established no man could ever buy you.”

 

It was already dark outside the window. Ed wanted to move closer. He did a little bit, cautiously. He didn’t know what the rules were, exactly. “Were you really alright here?”

“Yes. Stop worrying.”

“Still technically my job.”

“Not after hours,” the President said. “It was never your job off the clock. You have another job off the clock.”

Ed laughed. “Well, uh.”

 

The President kissed him. He did it matter-of-factly, and deeply, and very sweetly, tilting Ed’s chin down with his hand. He tasted like cigarettes and cold. “My god, you’re adorable,” he said. “You’re a stunning, angelic thing. I’d have bought you ten sweaters if you had anywhere to put them.”

 

“I uh…” Ed said. He wanted to swoon. He found himself putting his arm around the President’s body, pressing his face into his hair again. It felt safe there. “Oh god,” he said. “You’re here. It’s weird.”

 

He knew he must have sounded stupid, but the President didn’t seem to think so. “Yes,” he said, gently, quietly, stroking the back of Ed’s neck. “I understand that. But it’s also right. It feels right to me, insomuch as anything does at the moment. And I hope it does to you.”

“No, it does. But… I keep not trying not to say ‘sir’. I keep trying to use your name. It’s, uh…”

“It’s odd. It’s an adjustment. But things change. If we don’t adapt, we’re nothing. That’s what life is, Edward: change. Forward momentum.”

 

He said that in a low voice near Ed’s ear. It was intimate, a secret romantic whisper. It made Ed’s body pulse. “Huh,” he said.

“Would it help if I got you off?”

“Um,” Ed said. “Probably.”

 

They tried fucking in the shower. It didn’t work. It never worked, shower sex never worked. Hand jobs and kissing were about the best you could do in there, and that wasn’t what Ed was going for, he was aiming for the full porno experience. It was an awkward mess and it made them laugh.

 

Ed figured the President had agreed to it for the sake of trying it out rather than any hope of actually getting the job done. And, if he was honest, the real reason Ed had wanted to do it wasn’t even about having sex. It was so he could press the President’s wet, naked body up against his. He wanted to feel him. He wanted to look at him. He told him so.

 

The President gripped him so strongly in response to those statements that Ed suspected they meant a lot. He so seldom took his clothes off to fuck, Ed realized. He wondered if he was self-conscious about his surgery scars – Ed was of his own, to an extent, or he had been – but the President been like that since the beginning, or at least since he’d been President. Reluctant to take off his clothes in the same way he was reluctant to take off his armor.

 

They finished each other on top of the covers, on the bed, damp and still naked. Ed had closed the blinds and it changed the space in a way he hadn’t anticipated. They were totally alone in here, it was really just the two of them, and it was silly and earnest and warm and safe. When Ed came, it seemed easy and momentous at the same time. He laughed through it. It made him happy. The President kissed him like he was proud.

 

Afterwards, when they’d put clothes on again, the President made him a pork chop, and an omelet with cheese and mushrooms in the middle. The omelet was reasonably well formed, if a little crispy, and he produced it almost effortlessly. Ed was impressed, and he said so. The chop was good, and he’d made potato salad too. “This is food, Edward,” he said, handing it over. “This is what organisms consume in order to better forestall the inevitable. I understand that it’s new to you.”

“This is a pretty weird combination of foods, I gotta say.”

“No it isn’t,” the President said. “You just don’t know because you don’t eat anything.”

 

Ed was pretty sure that was wrong, but he also didn’t care. He accepted the plate, he accepted a beer, and he accepted the President sitting down next to him on the bed, putting his plate on the bedside table in order to pull Ed’s laptop forward.

“So,” he said. “Where were we?”

 

Ed chose not to point out how utterly adorable he continued to find the President’s huffy but rapt appreciation of _Game of Thrones_. “It’ll have saved our place. I’ll catch you up if you missed anything.”

“Yes thank you,” the President said. “That will be appreciated, if required.”

“Just let me know so I can pause it.”

“Are you insinuating I’ve been talking over it?”

“No, I’m telling you you have,” Ed said.

 

The President gave him a look. He hit play with his thumb. Ed smirked.


	6. Chapter 6

Before falling asleep, Ed wondered to himself how long the President could possibly enjoy slumming it in his apartment. He didn’t have to wait to find out. In the morning, the President told Ed to pack a bag, and to come with him to the Hay-Adams and Ed did what he was told. There wasn’t any point arguing. He didn’t live in the real world anymore anyway, he’d established that.

 

“Edward,” the President said, while Ed was packing, “we’re still going to need to speak to the detail about where we go from here.”

“You’re right,” Ed said.

“What’s your timeline?”

“I’m still giving notice today.”

“Is that time-sensitive?”

“I want it to be today.”

“I mean do you have an arranged appointment?”

“No,” Ed said. “I was just going to go in and speak to the dep. director. He’ll see me, it’s a Head of PD privilege.”

 

The President nodded. “And you’re absolutely decided? This is what you want to do?”

 

I decided when you walked in the door two days ago, Ed thought, but he said, “yes.”

 

“Alright, good,” the President said. “And that’s… shall we say after breakfast?”

“Yeah,” Ed said. “Let’s have breakfast.”

“Detail first? It seems wise to prepare them.”

 

It did. It made Ed smile. All of this did. He didn’t know why. “If you want. Yeah. Seems good.”

 

“Alright,” the President said. “How’s this? We go there, we bring them in with us, and we explain. We ask their advice in proceeding, then they take you to give notice. Is that alright with you?”

“Seems like the best idea.”

“Are you nervous?”

“I’m…” Ed said. “I have no idea what I am. This feels... I don’t really have an analogy. This is good team planning though. It’s… good strategy. You and me.”

 

The President smiled at him. “I know what you mean. There’s a certain unit cohesion.”

“What about you?” Ed said.

“What about me?”

“Are you sure?”

“About what?”

“I don’t know, pick an aspect.”

 

The President laughed. “I’m sure enough to do it. Hurry up, for fuck’s sake. How long does it take you to pack a case? Can you deputize me? I want to get this show on the road.”

Ed rolled his eyes. “Take your own bag down to the car, okay?”

 

The President gave him a huffy look, but he picked up his bag. “Edward?” he said, before he left the apartment. “We’re really doing this?”

“We really are,” Ed said.

 

The President nodded. He left.

 

Ed took a look around the apartment before he left himself. It felt hard to leave it this time. He didn’t know when he’d be back, and he knew when he did come back everything would be different. And it was just a space, but it had been his space for a long time. He touched the kitchen counter like he was saying goodbye to it, and he guessed he probably was. He was silent in the car, but the President didn’t ask him about it.

 

The hotel was ridiculous. The suite was the size of a house. It was fitted like a house too, like a really rich person’s house. Ed didn’t ask what it cost to stay there. He decided not to think about it. He already felt like he was in a movie anyway, and in that context accepting the luxury of his surroundings was easy. He put his case down beside one of the sofas while the President waved the detail in. He folded his arms, waiting, while he directed them into chairs, then did what he was told when he was waved over and sat next to the President. There was a long silence, a silence in which Ed slapped his palms on his thighs to center himself.

 

“Hi guys,” he said, when it was evident nobody else was going to say anything. “We’ve got a situation we need to uh… well, talk to you about. I’d like some feedback if you can.”

“Sure, sir,” Clark said. Ed couldn’t make out the tone. His ears were ringing. He looked down at the table between them but he couldn’t focus on that either. It seemed a million miles away. He was floundering.

 

The President noticed. Or at least it seemed like he did, maybe this was his plan all along. Either way, he took Ed’s hand, pulled it into his lap, and seemed to sit up straighter. “Edward and I are in love,” he said.

 

Martinez and Clark looked about as shocked as Ed felt. Not, Ed suspected, because of the content of the revelation, but rather because the revelation was being made at all. And possibly the word choice of it. Ed didn’t want to interrupt the President, but he did want to ask about that. There wasn’t room for that in their united front so he didn’t, but _are we?_ is what he would have asked.

 

“I’m telling you now that we intend to proceed with open acknowledgement of that being the case,” the President continued. “Edward intends to resign today…”

“I do, yeah,” Ed said, “that’s what’s happening.”

“… he’s moving north with me, and from there, well… you tell me. What’s the policy, what’s the process? How do we ensure Edward’s safety in this matter? Is there some sort of declaration thing? What?”

 

Ed wondered if the detail caught any trace of the President’s awkwardness. It was obvious enough to Ed but he was used to being the only person in the room who could read him. He let him keep talking. He let him keep hold of his hand. He knew the President did that in part to right himself, and he didn’t mind, because it was just as vital to him at this point. He gave the detail a sheepish look. They just stared.

 

“It’s been strictly professional until this point,” the President added.

“That’s agreed, sir,” Martinez said. “There’s no question on that, the reports back you up.”

“What about…” Ed started to say, but Martinez shut him down.

“There’s nothing in the reports, sir. Whatever happened, it happened off duty, and that’s none of our business.”

“Nothing happened,” Clark said. “Not according to the reports.”

 

Ed was grateful for that. Grateful his trust had been well placed. “They’ll probably depose me,” he said.

“Sure,” Martinez said. “But there’s fuck all they can do with zero evidence. Uh, sorry sir, I mean there’s nothing they can do.”

“That’s okay,” Ed said. “Swear as much as you want. We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

 

“Alright,” said the President, in a tone that suggested he wasn’t pleased at being left out of the banter. “Alright, so what do we do?”

“Well I mean there’s no obligation to declare anything,” Clark said. “You’re not… uh, sorry sir, but you’re not in office anymore. It’s not… illegal… to be a private citizen and have an affair.”

“We’re not having an affair,” the President said. “My wife, my wife the President, is fully aware of what’s going on. We’re separated in everything but legality. It’s a timing issue, she just took office. It’s not an affair.”

“Uh,” Clark said. “Sorry, sir.”

“I don’t have _affairs_ ,” the President said.

“It’s okay,” Ed told Clark. “I get what you mean, and the legality is important. Sir,” he said to the President. “Let them tell us what to do.”

 

The President glared at him. There was a lot of blinking and tie-straightening and collective throat clearing from the other side of the room, but Ed kept his chin high for the duration. He refused to look embarrassed.

 

“Alright,” the President said, finally. “Well, go on then, recommend.”

“It’ll get out,” Martinez said. “We can try to keep it from getting out, but it will get out. Unless you’re shipped out under cover of darkness or something. But they’ll have to depose Eddie either way so it becomes public record at that point, or at least the fact a deposition is happening does.”

“I’m not embarrassed,” the President said. “I have no reason to be embarrassed. I’m not concerned that the public knows, I’m concerned about Edward’s safety, and I suppose his liability.”

Are you concerned about how you’re talking about Edward in the third person while he’s right next to you? Ed thought. Because Edward is concerned about that. But he let it go under the circumstances. He thinned his lips.

 

“It’s, uh,” Clark added, “we, uh, we might be able to push for spousal protection, sir, protocol-wise. There isn’t a category for… first boyfriends.”

“Alternatively,” Matinez said, “uh… no offense sir, but the thing that makes the most sense right away is that for now we actually do treat Eddie, protection-wise, like, well, like a party with which you were having an affair.”

“There’s policy for that?” the President asked.

“Yeah, for sitting Presidents. I don’t know where it sits under the Former Presidents Act. I don’t even know if it’s relevant to any other status of protectee. There might not be anything.”

“I thought you said spousal protection?”

 

“We’re not married,” Ed said, simply. He turned to the detail. “Is there any actual precedent? I mean I know there’s not… exact… but…”

“I don’t know, sir. I know for Clinton they used to pick up his dates when he was jogging and escort them in, so they were under protection during that time, but those were dates. And he was in office. The situation doesn’t really translate.”

 

“Right,” Ed said. “I mean it’s possible it’s not even that risky a situation. Who am I, to the public? I’m just some guy.”

“I wouldn’t say that, sir,” Martinez said. “I think… uh… no offence, Mr. President, but there are a few issues with uh…”

“With my popularity,” the President said. “Or lack thereof. Yes, I’m aware I’m not America’s Favorite Son at the moment. That’s what this conversation is about.”

“And they will depose you, sir.”

“Yeah I know,” Ed said. “I figured.”

“I mean, if there is precedent, they’ll tell us,” Martinez added.

“Right. Yeah, you’re right. I guess you’re gonna have to talk to the higher ups. I mean, I’m guessing they’re going to tell you after I’m in there today.”

“It’s immaterial anyway,” the President said. “We’ll be married eventually anyway, so it’s sensible to plan accordingly.”

“ _Excuse me?_ ” Ed said.

“Never mind, Edward. We’ll talk about it later.”

 

Ed just stared. “Have you got anything to add to this?” the President prompted him. Ed figured he should probably stop looking shocked and contribute, but it was difficult.

 

“I don’t know,” he said, forcing it out. “Policy-wise they’re right, I don’t know anything other than that. Can we, um, can we talk about what you just said?”

“Not right now. Are you going to be alright?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m not actually officially resigning yet, I’m notifying them I’m giving my resignation. I’m going to HQ, I’m telling them why, then coming back. I’ll submit the full document later in the week, and then they’ll investigate, and hopefully just, uh, routinely. But can we…”

 

“Won’t they ask you any questions?”

“Not much ‘til I submit it formally. Just, are you sure, and are you aware you’ll have to do a bunch of stuff, and am I aware they’ll need to talk to you. It’ll be straight-forward.”

“That’s not what you’re doing today? Submitting formally?”

“I have to write it first. And before that, I have to notify them of this situation so I know what they want me to cover. There’s a process.”

“Well, I suppose it’s…”

“Don’t worry,” Ed said. “I know what I’m doing. Can we um… what exactly did you mean by…”

“Never _mind_ , Edward.”

 

Ed shut up. He thought, though he couldn’t be sure, that his men wanted to laugh about it, but he certainly wasn’t going to let them. “I’m gonna need someone to take me to HQ,” he said. “I’m gonna want to do that at… 11:30, so if you could come get me then, I’d appreciate it.”

 

It looked like his tone had the effect he wanted it to. Their faces got serious. “I’m assuming you’ll get a new brief once I’m done,” Ed said. “But for now, I guess… assume you’re doing what you were doing before but just with this… new awareness.”

“Yes, sir.”

 

“That’s all,” Ed said. He said it firmly and he felt like kind of an asshole doing it, but he did it anyway. The detail left. He let out a breath he’d forgotten he was holding.

 

“Well done,” the President said.

“There’s still a lot to talk about.”

“I know. Would you mind not immediately listing every complication we still have to deal with while we let this successful moment land?”

 

Ed ignored him. “That being said, I won’t know exactly what it is until later. I don’t… I have no idea how this will go.”

The President nodded. “Alright. Breakfast then?”

“Well, sure, but…”

“I know what you’re going to say, Edward, but just not now, alright?”

“Well just…”

“After.”

“Was that… I mean, did your tongue slip?”

“No,” the President said. “No it didn’t. But just… not now.”

 

Ed stared at him for a good minute. The President stared back at him. He put his hand to Ed’s cheek, but he didn’t say anything. Ed guessed he’d screwed his face up because he felt it relax when it was touched.

 

He figured, on balance, it was probably best to let it go for the time being, but it took effort to do that. The President looked and sounded totally sure of himself, but Ed knew he wasn’t, and deploying Officer Ed again at this juncture just felt cruel.

 

They ate breakfast at a little table next to tall French windows, overlooking the White House. It was delivered to them on trays. Ed took his jacket off and draped it over his chair and rolled up his sleeves. It seemed appropriate to prepare in some way for this level of breakfast. He’d never seen the President eat this kind of thing before. He guessed it was just late enough in the day.

 

The President poured him a cup of coffee when he sat down. “So,” he said. “ _Eddie_. Really?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“They really call you Eddie?”

“They call me sir,” Ed said. He concentrated on his plate.

“Yes, but they said Eddie.”

 

“It’s what my mom calls me, okay? My mom and every single person I know or have even ever met in New Haven. That’s where I’m from, by the way. New Haven, Connecticut.”

“I know that.”

“Well,” Ed said. “I was Ed down here until my mother left a message at work.”

“Oh dear,” the President said.

“Yeah,” Ed said. “So.”

 

“Eddie,” the President said. “Would you please pass me the salt?”

“Not if you call me that.”

“You’re really serious?”

“I’m as serious as fucking cancer,” Ed said.

“Alright, calm down.”

“I am calm. I don’t want you to call me what my mom calls me.”

“Oh, come on, why not?”

“Because I have sex with you,” Ed said. “Or at least, so far.”

 

The President looked like he was thinking about it. “Please pass the salt, Edward, dearest.”

 

Ed did.


	7. Chapter 7

The time between convivial breakfast and horrifying HQ meeting passed so quickly Ed barely took it in. He was barely registering anything now either, he realized, scanning the waiting room on endless repeat, not retaining anything about it no matter how many times he did it.

 

It bothered him. Things kept happening in the corner of his eye, but when he turned to look there was nothing there. Just empty space. Empty chairs. A woman at a desk with a nameplate saying ‘Shirley Robinson’ and a mug saying ‘World’s Best Grandma’.

 

Shirley was no threat. Nothing here was any threat at all. He didn’t understand why he kept thinking in threats and their possibility. Just nervous, he figured. Wound up like a rubber band airplane. Any minute now he’d take off.

 

He checked his watch. Shirley noticed him do it. “It won’t be long now,” she said. Her tone was kind. Ed gave her a closed mouthed smile.

 

“Exciting times for you,” she said.

“Huh?” Ed said.

“The President’s resignation.”

“Oh,” Ed said. “Yes, ma’am.”

 

“You don’t know how hard it is for me to resist asking you all kinds of details,” Shirley said, smiling at him. “I know you won’t tell me, but I really do want to ask. That White House. It’s like _The Borgias_ , did you ever watch that show? Mr. then Mrs. then Mr. and then Mrs. President again. It must be a spicy home life.”

 

Ed almost laughed. He probably would have laughed under different circumstances. “If there was something to tell you ma’am, I would.”

“Oh, I know that’s a lie,” Shirley said. “They’ve kept you waiting so long. Do you want something to drink? I can get you a coffee from the staff room.”

“That’s okay. I can get one myself if I need to.”

“Well, if you’re sure.”

“Can I get one for you? I know where the staff room is.”

Shirley beamed. “Somebody raised you very well.”

 

His mother would be pleased to hear that, Ed thought. That would be something nice to tell her. Something in addition to the fact the was leaving DC for Maine because of how he was fucking the disgraced former President of the United Stated. Jesus. Imagining the light, sarcastic tone he would have used to tell her a tidbit like Shirley’s seemed impossible in the context of having to tell her this.

 

“Happy to do it, ma’am,” he said.

“You know,” Shirley said, “Actually I wouldn’t mind.”

Ed had just picked her ‘World’s Best Grandma’ mug off her desk when her phone lit up. She held up a finger to him while she answered. Ed stood in place. He figured it would be his summons, and it was. He put the mug down. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” Shirley said. “The exercise is good for me. I hope it goes alright in there, whatever it is.”

 

Ed’s smile felt stretched, but he tried.

 

Inside the room, the deputy director of operations and another secretary were waiting for him. The room had the air of impending disaster and Ed didn’t know why, since the deputy director couldn’t possibly know anything. Maybe he’d brought that air in with him. It certainly seemed attached to him, cold and sticking against his skin.

 

It didn’t make any sense, that sensation. Coldness and prophetic doom was well out of proportion for a simple indoor thing like this. Nothing could happen here that would put him in real danger. But when the deputy director asked him to sit down and he had to cross the open space of the room to sit at the chair in front of the deputy director’s desk he felt vulnerable, obvious, in clear sight, and at risk in a way that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

 

That was stupid. He didn’t know why he was being so stupid. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Special Agent,” the deputy director said, when Ed sat down, and Ed nodded and tried to use being businesslike to make himself stop being stupid.

 

He seemed distracted, the deputy director. He was shuffling through files on his desk, not looking at Ed. The secretary was already taking notes. About what? Ed’s demeanor? The weather? Realistically she’d be noting the time and who was there, but that shouldn’t be taking her this long. Then he wondered if it wasn’t taking her this long, and that instead his sense of time might not be working properly. That didn’t feel good.

 

“It’s not a problem,” he said, prompting the deputy director, who looked up at him.

“I’m curious what was so urgent you needed an immediate meeting but not so urgent you couldn’t relay the information via the usual channels.”

“It’s a sensitive matter, sir,” Ed said. “I have… um.”

 

He swallowed. The pause that made was long enough for the deputy director’s expression to shift from distraction into frustration. He was looking at Ed now, and Ed remembered the feeling of stepping on dry rock and it crumbling. He remembered himself slipping uneasily on the scree of the Valley walls. He’d fallen forward and dug his fingers into the walls of the canyon and the butt of his rifle had swung forward and clocked him on the chin. “I’m tendering my full resignation,” he said. “Effective immediately.”

 

Saying it knocked the breath out of his chest. He tried to make that less obvious. The deputy director registered surprise too, but not, Ed thought, as much surprise as he was going to register in a minute.

 

“You’ll need to tell me why,” the deputy director said. “You don’t need to go into extensive detail unless you particularly want to, but I need some indication in order to advise you on process. We may also need you to brief your replacements, for a start, so a timeframe would be helpful.”

 

Ed wasn’t quite ready to say why. “I’ll submit formally as soon as possible,” he said “but I think… you may wish to give me… there might to be some, uh, additional specific guidelines on how I should go about that.”

“If it’s family reasons then the guidelines are straightforward.”

“It’s, uh… it’s not family reasons.”

“Anything else is even more straightforward. You could have done this over the phone.”

“I uh…”

“I must say I’m sorry you don’t want to retain your position as the head of the former President’s detail,” the deputy director said. “He hasn’t made a formal staff request yet, but we assumed. Do you not want to move to Maine? That’s understandable, but it doesn’t mean you have to resign. This isn’t the Capitol police.”

 

Trying to hide how breathless he was had been a bad idea, clearly, because now he had to inhale loudly. He’d missed his footing. He had to grab something. He looked the deputy director right in the face. “I will be leaving with the former President, sir,” he said. “But not as the head of his detail. I’ll be leaving as his… romantic partner.”

 

The deputy director just stared. Ed heard the secretary scribbling furiously. How would a person write that down? How would he have written it in his own notes? Verbatim quote, probably. No editorializing.

 

“Please excuse me,” the deputy director said. “I’ll need you to repeat that.”

“The President and I,” Ed said. “The President and I are… I’m moving to Maine with him, sir. As his, uh. Well, with him. Romantically. We are, uh. We’re that.”

“I see.”

“So I need to resign immediately.”

“Yes, you certainly do.”

 

Ed was seconds from loosening his tie like a Rodney Dangerfield bit. Now, suddenly, he couldn’t stop imagining the President ramming it into his ass in New Hampshire. He remembered how his face had been pressed into the pillow, how he’d sobbed at how good it felt. He’d had a bruise on his chin in Korengal, but in New Hampshire, falling forward onto it had been soft and safe and exquisite. He blinked his eyes against the image. It didn’t help this time either.

 

He thought it must show on his face he was thinking about that, it must be obvious to the deputy director, whose eyes were boring into him. “Yes, sir.”

 

“This is very serious,” the deputy director said. “It’s extremely serious. At the very least there’s an implication of severe professional misconduct. Possible illegality. Would you mind telling me what the fuck you were thinking?”

“I, uh,” Ed said. “I don’t think I can, sir.”

“I’m going to assume you weren’t thinking,” the deputy director said. He lifted the handset of his phone and placed it face down on his desk. He hit a button. Ed assumed it was either a speed dial to Head Office, or Shirley. He lifted his chin.

 

“I think it’s fair to say that our relationship has been building over the past few months, sir,” Ed said, “but no amount of it has been conducted on duty, and as soon as it went far enough to warrant acknowledgement, well, I’m here.”

“And we’ll find that reflected in your duty reports, and the reports of your fellow agents?”

“Yes, sir,” Ed said.

“We’d better.”

“You will. I spoke directly with Clark and Martinez this morning before coming here, purely for security reasons, but that was this morning, and all they know is that I was coming here to resign.”

“And why.”

“It was my call that they needed to know why, sir. They knew for approximately an hour and a half, and that was my decision. If that’s misconduct, then it’s mine.”

“It absolutely fucking is,” the deputy director said.

 

The phone made a noise. A click. An answer. The deputy director picked it up. “Put me through to Head Office,” he said. Ed could hear talking. It did sound like Shirley. He hoped she’d had time to get her coffee. It didn’t seem right that she had to do that for the deputy director when surely he could have called the number himself. Ed didn’t like to question bureaucracy – you didn’t get anywhere if you did anyway – but this seemed stupid to him.

 

He waited though, silently, until the deputy director brought the phone down and put his hand over the receiver. “Your actual resignation deposition will be straightforward,” he said. “There’s still a standard requirement. You’ll start there. But I need to… goddamnit. Fucking hell, Meechum.”

“Yes, sir,” Ed said.

“This is completely out of order.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ll answer the questions we give you… email or something, or you’ll come in, and you’ll do that in your formal resignation, and then we’ll have to cross-examine you on those. This isn’t going to be… it won’t just go away.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’d better not start thinking it will.”

“I won’t, sir.”

“Maybe if you were fucking the current President you’d be in a better position.”

 

Ed didn’t answer that. He was tempted to tell the deputy director to shut his fucking face, but he managed not to.

 

“Then,” the deputy director continued, “there’s the issue is with the President’s investigative committee into the former President. Once you’ve resigned, we can’t keep you from being subpoenaed.”

“I’d anticipated that, sir,” Ed said.

“You understand that we can no longer protect you?”

“I do, sir.”

“That may put you in a difficult position.”

“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

 

The deputy director, Ed thought, seemed to pick up on the undercurrent of insubordination in that response. But so what, Ed thought. He didn’t answer to them anymore. He was in the air. You can’t take orders when you’re falling. “I think I know what you’re thinking, sir,” Ed said.

“And what’s that, Special Agent?”

“You think that’s why he promoted me, why he wanted me on the detail.”

 

“I’m sure his reasons are his own,” the director said, but it was obvious from his lack of surprise or offense that Ed had been right about his opinion. There was noise on the other end of the phone. The deputy director put it to his ear.

 

Ed knew he was supposed to stay quiet, but he didn’t. He lifted his chin up high again. “You think I shouldn’t have been promoted.”

“These aren’t my decisions to make.”

“But you’d have made a different one.”

“I don’t waste my time questioning the way things are, Special Agent.”

“Well it’s not why,” Ed said.

 

The deputy director asked the person on the phone to excuse him, then put his hand back over the receiver. He didn’t look happy.

 

“I’m good at my job,” Ed said. “I’ve been good at my job since day one. Any investigation will show that. I stand by my record, sir.”

“Well, good for you.”

“I shouldn’t have to point this out,” Ed said, “but I took a bullet.”

 

It was obviously hard for the deputy director to respond to that. Ed could see from his face that whatever he wanted to say was deeply sarcastic and possibly very loud, but evidently he wasn’t going to do it in his office with a secretary listening. Ed gave him long enough to really appreciate how pissed off that was making him, and then he said, “I’m not ashamed of how I’m leaving here.”

 

“Pleased to hear it,” the deputy director said.

“It’s true,” Ed said. He stared. He kept his face flat.

 

So did the deputy director. “We’ll expect your written resignation by the end of your leave period, and we’ll expect the questions we’ve sent you answered. You’ll make yourself available for your exit interview and deposition, and for any further investigations we deem warranted.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Whenever we deem warranted.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re not to leave DC until we say you can.”

“With respect,” Ed said, “you can’t tell me that.”

“I’m not really feeling that respect, Special Agent.”

“I respect the job,” Ed said. He didn’t add anything else.

 

The deputy director narrowed his eyes. “I’ll need your gun and your badge.”

 

How cliché, Ed thought. Even when he’d left the force they hadn’t asked him like this, it’d just been an expected part of signing out and he’d done it while he did everything else. It felt like a movie, being asked like this. Or like an accusation. Which, he figured, it probably was. He slid his gun out of its holster and his badge off of his hip. He laid them on the director’s desk. Next, he took out his lapel pin and put it there too. He waited, staring.

 

“I don’t know what you’re waiting for,” the deputy director said. “Flowers? A parade?”

 

Ed didn’t answer.

 

The deputy director rolled his eyes. “That will be all, Agent Meechum.”

 

Ed didn’t say goodbye when he left the room. Shirley wasn’t at her desk, so he didn’t say goodbye to her either. He wished he could have. He hoped she’d got her coffee.

 

It felt strange in a way he couldn’t articulate, walking through HQ without his gun and his badge. It was strange that he felt strange, because he went out without them all the time and it never bothered him, but he guessed partly it was knowing he could never put them back on.

 

That and the fact that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d worn a suit when it wasn’t for work. And he was at work, in the work building, or one of them, and the most officially worky of them all not counting the White House. His unholstered hip felt unprofessionally naked in this context, like he’d forgotten to wear a tie.

 

That sensation lasted all the way through the leaving headquarters security process, and it hadn’t dissipated by the time he climbed into the back of the car. It felt strange to be in the back of the car instead of the front too, and the second he registered that, he knew it was time to force himself to stop thinking about how many things were strange. Right now clearly absolutely everything was, and listing them all individually would definitely drive him crazy.

 

He was glad it was Johnson driving him. Johnson’s youthful awkwardness made Ed feel competent, but also he’d never been anything to Johnson but a boss. That helped. Johnson was just a late 20s new recruit of the recently separated variety, and he did his job reasonably well, and Ed hadn’t known him before being promoted. There’d never been any need to prove himself to Johnson as a legitimate agent and authority figure and that made things easier right now. If Ed had to sit in the back of a car and be unemployed, he figured it was better to do it with someone who didn’t immediately put him on edge.

 

They didn’t speak to each other beyond cursory greetings when he got in. That suited Ed fine too. He couldn’t have talked immediately anyway, not preoccupied like he was. He didn’t regret anything exactly, not yet, the intensity of it was far too much for something as simple as regret, but whatever he felt it kept prickling at his skin and ringing in his ears in a way that took over. He couldn’t make it land cleanly enough to parse anything out of it. It was maybe the most surreal thing out of three days of extremely surreal things actually, and that, Ed thought, was really saying something.

 

He wished he’d accepted it when the President had offered to come with him. That was stupid to think, he’d be with him again in fifteen minutes, traffic willing. But he wanted him now anyway. He wanted to press himself against him and feel him and smell him and know that something about this was real at least, and that he’d done this huge thing for a real reason. He wasn’t just leaping into another goddamned abyssal valley. He closed his eyes, picturing hugging the President, trying to anchor himself with it. As stupid as that was, he did it anyway.

 

“Sir?” Johnson said, looking at him in the mirror, “you okay?”

 

Ed’s eyes snapped open. “You don’t have to call me that anymore, Johnson. I’m not your boss. I’m not even an agent. I’m officially just Ed.”

 

Johnson didn’t answer that, he just looked embarrassed. Ed got it. He knew he sounded bitter. He figured the surreal way he felt probably showed on his face, and that the weirdness of the situation was likely straining Johnson’s training beyond recognition. Ed thought about apologizing, but he didn’t. It was definitely weird. There was no use pretending it wasn’t.  

 

“Well, congratulations just the same, sir,” Johnson said, after recovering himself. “On your, uh, on your boyfriend.”

 

That took Ed by surprise. “Thanks,” he said, before he’d thought about it. But he meant it, he realized. It was an oddly touching thing for Johnson to say and he did want to say thanks for it.

 

“Don’t mention it, sir,” Johnson said. He frowned. Then he said, “I, uh. I don’t want to say something out of line.”

“It’s not out of line, it’s fine.”

“Well, no, I mean… well, good.”

 

Johnson had turned his gaze back to the road. He wasn’t looking in the mirror at Ed anymore, but Ed could see him in it. He looked tense. Like he was blushing. “Well, shit, Johnson,” Ed said. “Now you gotta say it.”

 

“I just hoped it wasn’t happening at your expense, sir. I’m glad it’s not.”

 

Ed blinked. How long had Johnson been thinking that? Since New Hampshire? “People knew, huh? I mean, I figured."

 

Johnson didn’t answer that either, but Ed understood that. He wouldn’t have answered it himself in Johnson’s position. The fine art of not answering things was a respectable part of the job. They’d reached the turnoff to Pennsylvania Ave, and Johnson concentrated on that. Ed let him.

 

But then he did say something, suddenly. “I hope you’ll be happy, sir,” he said. “You deserve that.”

 

The plainspoken kindness of that statement was a genuine shock to Ed. Absolutely nothing had prepared him for it. He expected a base level loyalty from his people, of course he did, obviously, but he’d never in his life anticipated that any of that might extend to general well-wishes.

 

“Thanks,” he said, again, inadequately, while he tried to think of something else to say. He found he couldn’t. He didn’t even know what there was to say.

 

All of that seemed like too much to muse out at a former subordinate who was driving him around anyway, so he figured it was better kept to thanks. Johnson pulled into the hotel driveway, through to the parking area. Back to surreality.

 

“Hey,” Ed said, before he knew why, “come up, when you get off. We’ll have a drink or something. On me.”

“With you and the former President?” Johnson said. “Uh, if you like.”

“No obligation.”

“No, it sounds… sure, yes sir, that’d be…”

 

Johnson’s expression was very pained. He was an anxious guy, Ed thought, and he always had been. Eager to please, which was practical in some situations and less in others. Ed couldn’t tell if he was concentrating on his parking turns because he needed to, or because he needed to avoid talking.

 

“I sure made this awkward,” Ed said. “Sorry about that.”

 

“No you didn’t, sir,” Johnson said. He brought the car to a stop and looked up into the mirror again. “I think I did. I’m actually just… Sorry sir. I think I’m just… generally prone to making things awkward.”

“Well,” Ed said. “This time you made it decent. And it’s been a pleasure working with you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You don’t have to have a drink if you’d rather not. Just a suggestion.”

“No, I’d like to,” Johnson said.

“Well, okay.”

“It’s been a pleasure working with you too, sir.”

 

“Thanks,” Ed said. He got out of the car. “Do you need my number?”

“It’s the Secret Service, sir,” Johnson said. “I have your number.”

 

Of course he did, Ed thought. He felt stupid having said that, crossing the hotel lobby, then obvious and vulnerable. There were agents there but that didn’t make him feel any more secure. Not even when Peele got in the elevator with him. They didn’t speak. Ed didn’t know what he would have said. He just capitalized on the last of his Boss Man status and stared ahead. Peele let him into the room and he nodded at her and that was that. And that, he realized, actually was that. On this whole job. Forever.

 

“Edward,” the President said, standing up. He said goodbye to whoever he was talking to on the phone, and hung up. “My god, you look like you’ve seen your own grave. Did something happen you weren’t anticipating?”

 

Ed hadn’t known he looked any particular way, but he guessed he wasn’t surprised. “No,” he said, “it was pretty much what I expected, I just…”

 

“Oh, darling,” the President said, when Ed’s voice faltered. He pulled Ed close and held him there. His arms were so long, Ed thought. He could hold Ed all the way around. Ed didn’t know why he was noticing that now. He moved his face back to where he could see.

 

“Tell me all about it,” the President said. He looked so concerned.

 

“There’s nothing to tell,” Ed said. He shrugged, and the President let him go. “I quit. They’re not happy.”

“How so?”

“They’re going to send me some stuff I have to answer, and they’re going to depose me. I assume more than once. But we knew that, right?”

“What did they say to you?”

“They just weren’t happy.”

“Do you think you’re in real trouble?”

“I don’t know. They’re just really not happy.”

“I see. I suppose it’s hard to lose a good agent.”

 

“It’s not that,” Ed said. “It’s the scandal. It makes them look bad. Like they can’t control operations, like the Service is some kind of wild sex party and nobody knows what anybody’s doing. They’ve already got a problem with that. It doesn’t help, me doing this.”

“That’s hardly your fault.”

“And it makes promoting me questionable. Since it was accelerated.”

“Your record speaks for itself, Edward. There’s nothing questionable about spotting talent.”

“Look,” Ed said. “I appreciate the angle you’re trying to take, but uh…”

“But what?”

 

Ed sucked his bottom lip in. “Nothing.”

 

The President put his hands on Ed’s shoulders, holding him at arm’s length. It looked like he was studying his face. He rubbed Ed’s shoulders with his thumbs. “Let’s get you something to eat. We’ll talk it over.”

“No, it’s okay. I feel… I’m not hungry.”

“No?”

“Nah.”

“Well, if you say so.”

“I’m okay.”

“You just…” the President said. He didn’t seem to know what to say. “Hmm.”

 

“Don’t worry about it,” Ed said. “It’s done, we’re done, that part’s over. I don’t know what’s next but if anything I think they’re gonna want to avoid drawing attention to it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I said I quit as soon as I should have. If they take me at face value… it’s better for them probably if they do. I hope they don’t investigate any more than they have to.”

 

The President let Ed go to look at a text. Ed smiled at him. It was the same kind of smile he’d given Shirley, polite, and it made him feel disingenuous and bad, but he didn’t know what else to do. “Hey,” he said. “One of my guys is gonna come up later.”

 

“What?” the President said, slipping his phone back into his pocket.

“You know Johnson?”

“Young, anxious. Yes. I remember him.”

“We were going to have a drink.”

“Were you?”

“It’s just,” Ed said, “I felt like talking to somebody from the job.”

“You can’t talk to me?”

 

“It’s not about my, uh, my ‘feelings’ or anything,” Ed said. “I just need to… shoot the shit about… I mean, quitting work, about… is that… uh… do you mind?”

“I suppose not.”

“You seem like you do.”

“No, I… I don’t. I just…”

“I don’t have to, I can cancel.”

“No, do. Please. I’ve got to take a meeting or two, I’ll coordinate, leave you alone.”

 

This is weird, Ed wanted to say. But he had no idea how to just announce something like that to the President, just declare what he felt and ask what the situation was. He’d never even attempted to say something like that before. They were driving off-road, on the scree. His stomach jangled. He wanted it to stop.

 

“I can go home to do it, if you want?” he tried.

 

“That’s not practical,” the President said. “It’s not safe for you to just be wandering around.”

“I’m sure I could make it practical.”

“I don’t want you to,” the President said. “I want you to see your friend in this suite we’re inhabiting, which you are entitled to do.”

 

Ed thought about it. “I don’t know if he’s my friend.”

“Colleague then. It’s academic.”

“Well, if you...”

“It might be fun,” the President said. “Like playing house. Practicing.”

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t matter. Let him know, if you need to. It’s fine with me.”

“No that’s okay. He’ll come up when his shift’s finished. We’ll go to the bar.”

“But here first.”

“If you like.”

“So at four.”

“You sure have those shifts memorized.”

 

The President smiled now. Distractedly, anxiously, cautiously. He looked at his watch. “That’s not far away. Are you sure you won’t eat something? If you’re going to drink.”

“No, I’m okay.”

“Alright.”

“I might take a shower.”

“If you think it will help.”

“I don’t need to be helped.”

 

He couldn’t read the look the President gave him, but he knew he didn’t like it. “What?”

“Nothing,” the President said.

“No, what?”

“Go have your shower.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” the President said. He said it firmly this time. Ed wanted to argue with that too. He felt himself tensing up, and he saw the President watching him do it. He thought maybe they were going to fight. They either had to fight or keep on doing this, being weird and tense at each other and not admitting it out loud.

 

About what though? What possible thing could they have to fight about? What would they even say?

 

“We’ll talk practicalities later,” the President said. “Go on.” Ed felt ashamed. He dropped his eyes.

 

He removed himself to the bathroom before he could do anything else embarrassing. He hoped his aggressive exit didn’t betray him too much, but it probably did. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. Being mad at the President, or something like that anyway because mad didn’t really seem like a strong enough word for what he felt, didn’t make any sense. The President hadn’t made him quit, for a start. Ed had done that because he wanted to. He wanted to move to Maine and be lovers in stupid sweaters and whatever else happened up there in the… Something State. He didn’t even know Maine’s fucking state slogan. He didn’t care about investigations or subpoenas or what anyone thought of him. He cared about the President. He cared about being with him. So he didn’t understand why he felt like yelling.

 

The hotel shower was one of the nicest he’d ever been in. He guessed he understood why the President had bitched about the water pressure at his apartment if this was what he was comparing it to. It did actually take the edge off things, but even that pissed him off, because he didn’t feel like being managed. Not by the President, and certainly not by a fucking shower. He wished he’d thought to bring a beer in here or something. Shower beers, Ed thought, were the solution to a lot of problems. He thought about calling out for one. He didn’t.

 

Actually, he half expected the President to come into the bathroom while he was showering, to find out what was up maybe or just to take advantage of his being naked to casually hit on him. He didn’t. It made Ed worry that he’d actually upset him by being pissy and he resolved to be nicer. He told himself to calm down. To practice feeling something other than shocked and annoyed, resolved to remember what he was doing and who with. He pressed his hands against the wall of the shower like he was about to do a wall pushup and concentrated on how that felt, until he thought he could remember.

 

He wasn’t doing well at remembering much else. He actually lathered up to shave when he got out because he’d forgotten it wasn’t the middle of the afternoon. It seemed of a piece with his inability to track the passage of time properly, and he didn’t like it. It made him antsy, and then it made him even antsier when he couldn’t figure out how to get dressed. He stood there thinking about it, not really understanding why it was this difficult to put clothes on his body at 39 years of age but being paralyzed by it just the same. His chest felt tight and he put his hand on it. He took a breath.

 

He thought about putting civilian clothes on. Jeans. A sweater. Maybe a blazer. The kind of presentable casual clothing he tended to refer to as a “recreation outfit”. He couldn’t do it. He didn’t know why. That felt more significant than he wanted it to be.

 

He couldn’t put his work clothes back on either though. The thought of that was equally horrible. Worse even.

 

He forced himself to move, to do something. He started to put on sweats – sweats counted as interim clothes, wearable limbo – but then he thought the bar might have a dress code. Then he decided he didn’t care. There had to be some advantage to his bizarre situation, and if the Former President’s Live-in Associate couldn’t wear sweats in the bar of his own hotel, then what could he do? It didn’t feel great but at least it was action and some action was better than none.

 

After pulling on his undershirt though, and rifling through his case for something long sleeved, he found his hand drifting to the President’s case. Putting his hands in there felt illicit but also good. He stroked one of his sweaters, bunched it up in his hand, let it loose again.

 

The President bought expensive sweaters. You could tell that just by touching them. They were soft. Maybe he wore them because he wanted something about himself to be soft. That was a stupid thought and probably not true, but it was a sweet one. Ed picked the sweater up and held it close to him. It smelled like the President’s body.

 

After a minute of doing that, without really thinking about it, he pulled it over his head. It was baggy on him. Big and warm and, impossibly, even softer from the inside. He wrapped his arms around himself, feeling it. He closed his eyes.

 

It occurred to him, suddenly, that the President must have brought his, Ed’s, case in here, to the bedroom. Ed hadn’t noticed that initially, rifling through his own fashion options, just taken it for granted that his case was there. But that small, sweet gesture, that reflexive little bit of accounting for Ed, it felt the same as wearing the sweater did. Safe. Cared for. Ed appreciated it.

 

He thought maybe he could wear the sweater out. Like comforting armor. But then he thought he’d need to ask and he didn’t want to do that. Not because he was mad, because he didn’t feel mad anymore – actually he didn’t feel much of anything now – he just didn’t know how he’d ask. It seemed too complicated to articulate exactly what he took from wearing it, especially when talking at all was already complicated enough on its own. So he took the President’s sweater off and put his regular hoodie on. But he touched the sweater fondly before putting it back.

 

He also made himself smile coming out into the main room again. So what if he had to force it. He remembered who he was dealing with and why he was here and he _wanted_ to force it. The President smiled back at him but it looked sheepish. In fact, this whole thing felt weird and sheepish and Ed didn’t know where to start with it anymore than he had the sweater. “Good shower?” the President asked him. And he looked like he knew it was an inane question.

 

Ed took pity on him. “Yeah. It did the job.”

“I’m glad,” the President said. Ed didn’t know what to do with his arms so he folded them, but he had to unfold them again when the President handed him a cocktail glass. “I made you this.”

 

“What is it?” Ed said.

“It’s an Old Fashioned, I think. There’s practically a whole bar here and I never do anything with it. So…”

“Why’d you make me a Old Fashioned?”

“Because I did.”

“No but why this, specifically?”

“I don’t know, Edward, I just googled ‘bourbon cocktails’ and I thought it would be fun. Does it taste bad?”

 

Ed took a sip. “No, it’s alright.”

“So you forgive me then?”

“For what?”

“For whatever it was I said.”

“You didn’t say anything,” Ed said.

 

The President looked at him for a while before turning back to the bar. He raised an eyebrow and then dropped it. Despite the obvious forced amusement in that expression, he couldn’t disguise an undercurrent of genuine snottiness.

 

Ed was apparently failing pretty hard at his plan to stop things from getting weird again. He wanted to tell the President not to worry. He wanted to hug and kiss him and let himself be hugged and kissed in return until everything went away. Maybe even confess that he’d put on his sweater for a minute or two, and that just the feel and the smell of it had comforted him so much he’d almost asked to wear it out. The President would laugh at that, surely.

 

Though he also wanted to tell him to shut his face the fuck up for just a minute because he couldn’t be bothered dealing with this tone right now. So he compromised on saying nothing. He just sipped the drink. It legitimately wasn’t bad.

 

“Did they tell you when they’ll need to hear from me?” the President asked, evidently allowing Ed to continue playing it the way he was. It looked like that was a strain.

“No,” Ed said. “I actually don’t know if they just contact you or they’ll tell me first. It’s a pain there isn’t… it would be easier with precedent.”

“David Derickson.”

“Excuse me?”

“He was Lincoln’s bodyguard and probably lover.”

“I know who he was,” Ed said.

“I suppose they didn’t move to Maine together.”

“No.”

 

The President’s face had taken on a sad, furrowed, worried expression. “Edward, I just…” he said, but Ed didn’t get to hear what he just because there was a knock at the door.

 

Johnson was right on time, apparently. Ed guessed it was probably a blessing in a way. He felt bad about it, but it was probably a blessing.

 

“Hello, Johnson,” the President said, immediately. It was gracious and welcoming and sounded genuinely kind. Ed was impressed the President could change his manner on a dime like that, so perfectly and so quickly. He guessed Johnson was just impressed by the largess, because he stammered. “H… G… Hello, sir, thank you.”

 

“Will you have something to drink?” the President asked him.

“Uh, yes sir,” Johnson said.

“We have… well, everything really.”

“We might go to the bar,” Ed said. He tried to look casual and welcoming. “Hi.”

“Have a drink here first,” the President told him. “Johnson?”

“I’ll take a vodka and coke if you have that.”

“We do,” the President said.

 

Ed watched Johnson walking around the room, looking at it. He was trying not to seem impressed, Ed could tell. He could tell because it was what he would have done if the intensity of everything that was happening hadn’t rendered him tired and indifferent. His limbs felt loose, suddenly. He dropped down onto the sofa and accepted his glass when it was given to him. He let Johnson do what he wanted and didn’t direct him, and it seemed like what he wanted to do was look out the windows to where you could see the White House.

 

“Good view,” he said. The President handed his drink to him and nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “It helps keep things focused.”

“I, uh. Thank you for the drink, sir.”

“That’s quite alright. Will you sit down? You’re making me nervous.”

 

All of this unfolded around Ed with the air of fantasy, like watching a movie from the inside of it. He’d slipped from being Ed Meechum, Special Agent in Charge, Johnson’s Boss, into the President’s dandy Whatever who wore lounge wear in polite company and reclined on sofas, and he’d done it without anybody even noticing. He’d acted on one decision and now the world was an entirely different place. That was all ‘before’ and now everything to come was ‘after’. That felt familiar to him in a nagging way he didn’t like.

 

Johnson did sit down, in an armchair. The President sat on the sofa next to Ed. He put his arm around Ed’s shoulders. He stroked there. Maybe because he didn’t have to say anything, Ed leaned into it. He put his hand on the President’s thigh.

 

They talked for a little bit, but Ed couldn’t have said what about. Things seemed far too far away from him to concentrate on, so he didn’t. He just stopped registering. He floated away. Not far enough away that he couldn’t see what he was doing, just far enough that he didn’t care.


	8. Chapter 8

He dropped back into his body a couple of hours later in the middle of a sentence he couldn’t remember starting. He didn’t remember when he’d gotten drunk either, but it had definitely happened. There was a click and a crunch and a thud and a roaring sound for a second and then hearing himself speak and feeling himself speak were happening at the same time and he felt alright about that. “Fucked my way to the top,” he said. Was saying. “I’m the former President’s fuckin’ concubine, and it’s amazing.”

 

Johnson was laughing.

 

“What kind of… fucking nepotism...” Ed said. Jesus, what the fuck was he even talking about? How drunk was he?

 

“It’s not like that,” Johnson said. “I mean, unless it is, but it isn’t, right? Nobody could… I mean nobody could believe you’d do that.”

“Fuck my way to the top?”

“Exactly. You’re just this… this, like, you’re a stand-up guy, everybody knows that. You’re too good at the job for people to think that.”

“Well thanks.”

“I mean, you are.”

 

“I said that,” Ed said. “When I quit. That I’m good at my job.”

“Well, good. It’s true.”

“The thing is now I don’t know.”

“Well, like, you are.”

“Is being obsessive about it the same as being good at it?”

“With this job it is.”

 

Ed nodded. He wasn’t sure if he bought it, but he considered it. “So what did everyone think I was doing then? With him.”

 

“Who fucking knows,” Johnson said. “It’s not our job to think.”

“Yeah but you thought some weird shit was going on.”

“Well yeah because you’re like in love with him. And… you know he’s kind of a dick, right? Like… quite a huge dick.”

“No.”

 

“Eddie,” Johnson said. “He’s a dick. On a global scale.”

“That’s treason.”

“Not anymore.”

“He’s not, honestly.”

“Maybe he’s nicer if you’re…”

“Fucking him?”

“Uh huh,” Johnson said. “And we can’t all do that.”

 

Ed laughed. “Holy shit,” he said. “I’m moving to Maine with the fucking President.”

“Congratulations,” Johnson said. “Hey I got a text. There’s like six guys who want to come and drink with you.”

“What?”

“Yeah, everybody does.”

“Who’s everybody?”

“Everybody who’s not on shift?”

“They don’t have better things to do?”

 

Johnson stared at him. Then he started laughing. “Eddie, do you not know that people like you?”

“What?”

“People like you.”

“This is so fucking emotional.”

“I mean, people do like you.”

“Why?”

 

Johnson just laughed. Ed didn’t know which part of that embarrassed him the most, so he just said, “whatever, say yes,” and pointedly stopped caring about it, outwardly at least.

 

“Tell them to come here?” Johnson said.

“Yeah. I can’t really… I don’t know what the deal is with me… going anywhere right now.”

“Shit,” Johnson said. “How the watcher has become the watched.”

“So yeah, probably best.”

“Okay.”

“Just,” Ed said, “just gimmie… a second.”

 

He went into the corner of the bar to call the President. It seemed silly to do that when he could have just gone upstairs and talked directly to him, but he didn’t want to arrest the flow of events and besides, he realized, he was well on his way to being much more than just drunk. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be this fucked up around the President at this exact moment in time.

 

“Edward?” the President said when he picked up. “Are you alright? Where are you?”

“Hi, I’m… I’m still in the bar, I just thought I’d say that… this is kind of turning into a work drinks thing. Other people are coming. I don’t know how long…”

“That’s fine.”

“Is it fine?”

“It’s more than fine, darling. I’ll see you when I see you.”

“Well okay. I just… I don’t know what the rules are here.”

“The rules are, you’re allowed work drinks.”

“You still want me to put it on the room?”

“Yes, of course I do. What’s the worst you can do? Order an elephant?”

 

Ed leaned against the wall. “Say darling again. I like it.”

“Are you drunk, darling?”

“A bit.”

“Oh dear,” the President said. Ed thought he heard him laughing, softly, but he might have imagined it. “Are you having fun at least?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

“People like me,” Ed said.

“Yes, well, you’re very likeable.”

“No, they actually like me.”

“Alright, Sally Field. You have a good time.”

“Okay.”

 

That short phonecall was reassuring. He’d meant to apologize for being weird earlier, but it sounded to him like it maybe didn’t matter, and he returned to the table in a slightly more stable mood, though no less drunk. “Hey what is your first name?” he asked when he sat down. He couldn’t remember if he knew it and had forgotten it or had never taken it in at all. New drinks had arrived that he definitely didn’t remember ordering them.

 

He guessed maybe he hadn’t ordered them, but he also guessed it wasn’t so important to remember everything. Nothing could happen to him here, and the President wasn’t mad about it either. Shit, he had his own protection detail, even, though he couldn’t see them properly from here. He couldn’t remember who’d be on either. The roster would be all fucked up anyway.

 

Johnson made a face. “It’s John.”

“John Johnson?”

“I know,” Johnson said. “Believe me, I know.”

 

“What’s your middle name?” Ed said, laughing. “Jonathan?”

“No, it’s Paul.”  

“John Paul? Are you Catholic?”

“Nope I’m just… regular.”

“That’s a pope. John Paul.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah, he was the pope until… fuck I don’t know. Who knows. I’m not Special Agent in Charge of Popes.”

“Which is weird,” Johnson said, “because if you hadn’t quit, one day you probably could actually be that. Is that a thing? It seems like it would be a thing. Protection detail for the Vatican or something.”

 

Ed laughed.

 

“Are you?” Johnson said.

“What?”

“Catholic.”

“My mom is.”

“Doesn’t that mean you are?”

“Sure, technically, but I’m not like… a church guy.”

“I guess you couldn’t fuck the President if you were.”

“You’d be surprised,” Ed said. “That’s definitely a thing.”

 

For a second, Ed thought of something he didn’t usually, which was his mother and the Church and how her reaction to all of this might be influenced by all of that. He never thought about it on religious terms specifically. That wasn’t why he didn’t tell her. He thought about his mother as his mother and the Church as just a part of her, never the other way around. But what if it was the other way around? What if it was even worse than he was anticipating?

 

All of that seemed needlessly existential, not to mention actively hellish, so he stopped thinking about it. He’d throw up if he kept thinking about it. He felt the overwhelming desire to do something hard and physical and fast or at the very least call somebody a shitbird but he couldn’t think why. He said it out loud anyway, “shitbird”, and Johnson cracked up.

 

It didn’t take long before people started arriving, probably because, Ed guessed, a lot of them were in the area. Martinez and Clark showed up. Not Miller and Reed, but not, Ed was told, because they didn’t want to. They were on shift, they’d meet up later. And people kept coming. More people than Ed could name immediately, actually. Peele had apparently gone home to change and she was wearing a dress, which was bizarre in a way since he’d never seen her in anything other than her more-or-less regulation pantsuit, but it was also reminiscent of being out on the town overseas. You’d work next to these women every day in the same dirty uniform and not even notice that they were total babes until they pulled it out. That wasn’t strictly relevant to Ed’s interests, but he admired the craft.

 

That was what the whole thing reminded him of, actually. Shore leave, liberty. It had that kind of careless atmosphere, that same Last Call In Valhalla feeling. Except, he kept reminding himself, or being reminded by someone else, this was all specifically for him, and it wasn’t because anybody was going to die. He’d quit his job for love and that’s what everyone was here for. To talk to him about his having quit his job, for love. To tell him they wished him well in his having quit his job, for love. Which he had done. Earlier today. And that wasn’t going to stop being weird as fuck so he dealt with it by drinking.

 

He had distinct though blurry memories of their being a convivial group. Of laughing a lot. Of ordering progressively stupider drinks, shots, deliberately nonsensical cocktails. Of being informed by the detail on duty that technically the bar was closed, but they could stay if they kept it to this one area and stopped lighting cigarettes. Of trying to get the detail on duty to drink. He did not, however, remember getting back to the room. He didn’t remember falling asleep (or passing out, if it’d been that, which it probably had). He woke up in the dark on the sofa, with his head spinning and the President under his legs watching C-SPAN and all of that was blank.

 

“Hello, sweetheart,” the President said, when Ed stirred. “You’re shitfaced.”

“Yeah,” Ed said. “Yep.”

 

The President smiled at him. He squeezed his foot. “Want to go to bed?”


	9. Chapter 9

He didn’t stay asleep very long, and he felt the hangover as soon as he opened his eyes. He didn’t know what time it was, but it was barely light in the room and even that was punishing. He staggered out of the bed and very nearly fell over.

 

By the time he’d thrown up everything there was to throw up and crawled back to bed with a bottle of water, the President had woken up to take pity on him. “Oh dear,” he said. “You’ve contracted Malaria.”

“I’m,” Ed said. “Shh.”

“Are you alright?”

“I’m. So hungover.”

“You don’t look hungover,” the President said. “You look like Patient Zero of the zombie apocalypse. Really, I’m not joking, you look terrible.”

 

Ed couldn’t say anything. He had no idea why he’d think anybody was joking. He didn’t want to banter. He put his hand over his eyes to block out the light.

 

He heard the President make a clucking sound with his tongue. “How’s your head?” he asked. Ed just groaned at him.

 

“Did you take something for it yet? Here, let me…”

“There was aspirin, was that okay?”

“Of course it is. Oh dear. You really…”

 

“Sorry,” Ed said, meaning it generally, about everything.

“No, shh, I don’t mean that. How about in the guts? Is there an encore to that operatic performance in there?”

“That’s… so gross… I... oh. Oh god.”

 

Ed sat upright, but the moment passed. When it did, the President rubbed his back. “Oh dear.”

“I’m done, I’m just...”

“Alright,” the President said. “Well. I was once advised to drink a raw egg in tomato juice in a sit…”

“Oh god please stop.”

“…uation like this, but I don’t think we’ll do that. No. I don’t think we’ll do that.”

 

Ed just groaned again. He thought, though he couldn’t be sure, that he could actually hear the President smirking. Then he felt him rubbing his back again and stopped caring. He wanted to go back to sleep but the feeling of all-over griminess stopped him from doing anything but leaning against the President’s body and accepting the bottle of water back into his hand.

 

The President ordered them breakfast. He put a lot of milk in Ed’s coffee, and Ed drank it slowly, slumped on the President’s shoulder. He let himself be fed cautious bites of toast and scrambled eggs and fruit. After breakfast, the President gave him a pill. Ed recognized the pill. He hesitated.

 

“It’s OxyContin,” the President said.

“I know what it is. Why do you have this?”

“It’s a leftover. It is perhaps stronger than strictly necessary, but it’ll put you to sleep.”

“That’s pretty excessive. I’m just hungover.”

 

“Who cares?” the President said. “You’re entitled to excessive solutions occasionally. You look tragic. Sleep is where you need to be.”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ll feel better when you wake up.”

“I guess.”

“You will. Now listen. I have a little work, some now, some later in the day. Other than that, nothing. We’ll have dinner. Alright?”

“Assuming I haven’t thrown up an essential organ.”

“Oh, you’re so dramatic. Take the pill and sleep it off.”

Being called dramatic by _the President_ of all people was almost enough to make Ed say something, but thinking about what it would be, thinking about anything actually, just hurt too much to do anything. So he did what he was told. He took the pill, and it took him about fifteen minutes to fall back into the sleep of the dead.

 

He woke up panicking.

 

He didn’t know where he was and he didn’t know what he was doing there, and his heart had picked up aggressive speed and pulled him upright before he’d even opened his eyes. His muscles had seized, his shoulders had tensed, and his breath was shallow.

 

In that surge of adrenaline, taking things in took him a minute. He’d assessed the room for entry points and threats before he remembered which room it was and why he was there, and that awareness came only as he was carefully breathing himself back to sanity laser-focused on the entry point he thought was the most important. He was in a hotel suite. He was here with the President. Their relationship had officially progressed beyond Protection Detail with Benefits and into moving states together like U-Haul lesbians. Alright.

 

There was water on the bedside table, and took a sip of it, and forced himself to continue to breathe. He’d been hungover. He’d taken 30mg of brand name oxycodone. Those things together explained the fuzziness he felt now, and the fact that it was, he thought, judging by the sky, late afternoon he was waking up in. He did actually feel better in the head, though his guts felt suicidal. He remembered that he wasn’t really supposed to take drugs like that anymore because he didn’t have the intestinal integrity for it and so that was going to hurt until it was dealt with. But he breathed through it. He confirmed the time with his watch, which he apparently hadn’t taken off before going to bed. Besides the watch though, he was wearing nothing but shorts.

 

Okay. That was okay. He’d quit his job. He’d gotten hammered with his workmates. He’d done that with the abandon of somebody in shock. He’d quit his job to move to Maine with the President and he’d been kind of stunned by it and now he was here in the President’s hotel after a drugged out hangover nap, feeling better, but still terrible.

 

He took himself into the bathroom. Things chafed. They didn’t sit right. His hands shook when he washed them and his face in the mirror looked white and hollow and out of alignment. He wondered if he needed to throw up again but then he figured it would pass. He probably just needed to eat something. He couldn’t tell if his nerves were this raw irrationally, or if something was really wrong. Eating would help with that.

 

He couldn’t make himself put clothes on his greasy feeling skin, but he couldn’t make himself shower either. There were robes, so he settled for that.

 

When he wandered out of the bedroom the President was there, wearing his glasses and leaned over the coffee table, writing, talking into his phone in his other hand. He had a plate with a sandwich on it, and a drink. The plate with the sandwich had a pickle and a little crescent of potato chips, which Ed took to mean it had arrived recently.

 

He made no noise taking this all in, but he guessed the President saw him in his peripheral vision, because he stopped writing and put his hand over the phone. “Welcome back,” he said. Ed smiled, faintly. He didn’t have enough energy for a bigger smile.

 

The President patted the seat next to him and Ed came over. “No, send it to me now,” he said, into the phone. He picked up his plate and held it out to Ed and Ed took one of the sandwich halves off it. It had ham in it and he knew as soon as he took a bite that it was the right idea eating something. He closed his eyes. The President put a hand on his thigh.

 

He could hear the other person talking, but he couldn’t make himself concentrate enough to hear what it was about. He did hear the President cut them off, however. “Yes thank you,” he said, firmly. “That’s all. Goodnight.” Then he hung up.

 

“Welcome back,” he said to Ed, again. “I take it you slept?”

“Yeah.”

“Have the rest of this sandwich too, I don’t want it. I don’t know why I got it.”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“No, not really. I think sometimes I just… want a sandwich.”

 

Saying that seemed to trouble him, but Ed had no idea why. He ate the sandwich. He ate the pickle too. He felt less nauseous. He leaned back into the sofa. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“It’s about 50% financial administration for Maine things and 50% legal agreement things,” the President said. “It’s nothing to worry about, it’s just business. I’m trying to dispatch it quickly.”

“What kind of Maine things?”

“Oh, it’s too boring to explain. Why don’t you go and watch something or take a shower while I finish up?”

“How long will you be?”

 

The President looked at his watch. “I should be done by five or six? It depends on some responses and how prompt they are.”

“Okay,” Ed said. He didn’t know how to resolve what was going on. His stomach felt jumbled and horrible, not because of the opiate anymore, just a prickly stress feeling. He felt nervy and his skin felt clammy and he felt like the bottom had fallen out of everything with no anticipation. He wished the President would kiss him, or hold him and stroke him until he didn’t feel like this anymore.

 

He closed his eyes. If he could just make himself focus on something. If he could just find something to cling to. If he could do that then he could stop this from happening.

 

“Are you going to do something?” the President asked him. “I don’t mind, I’ve just got work to do and it’s a little bit… distracting.”

“You don’t need me to do anything?”

“No, I have this entirely under control.”

 

Ed felt his fingers grasping onto the Valley walls. They were slick with sweat and wouldn’t hold and he stumbled. In reality, he crossed his arms and clasped them under his armpits. “So you want me to amuse myself until you’re ready, there’s nothing I can do for you?”

 

The President’s eyes narrowed over his glasses. “What?”

“I’m just checking my services won’t be required.”

“What’s…”

“If you’ve got this covered, maybe I can send in someone else?”

 

The President put his phone down on the table. He took off his glasses and laid them on top of his pad. “Alright. What the fuck is going on?”

“You don’t need me to escort someone else in here for you to make a pass at?”

“ _Excuse me?_ ” the President said.

 

“Nothing,” Ed said, but he couldn’t make it actually mean nothing. He felt like he was sitting outside his body, or else so far inside it he couldn’t feel his own skin. He was watching himself pull back into the arm of the sofa, listening to himself say these things. And he couldn’t make himself mean nothing.

 

“If it’s nothing, why are you being so fucking surly?” the President said.

“I’m not.”

“Oh yes you are. I have no idea what that comment meant, but I do know you can either tell me what it meant or you can stop this immediately. Nothing is less attractive than sulking.”

 

Ed knew that had been meant to shame him into submission, but it was so obvious it had the exact opposite effect. The cold, sweaty tension he felt seemed to drop down in his gut and get clearer. It felt poised to accelerate. “I quit my job, remember?” he said. “You can’t talk to me like that anymore.”

 

The President blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You really don’t know why I’d ask you that?”

“I obviously don’t. Why don’t you enlighten me?”

“Did you fuck Tom Yates?”

 

“Did I… what the fuck?” the President said. “Where the fuck is this coming from?”

“You know what? I don’t care if you did. That’s your business. I don’t care. I just care that you got me to…”

“To what? What did I get you to do?”

“You got me to bring him to you. In the middle of the night. Like I didn’t know what you were doing.”

“Look,” the President said. “I have no fucking idea why you’re bringing this up, what it’s relevant to, and why you won’t just calm down and leave me alone. I have things to do here. Important, time sensitive things. I have neither the time nor the interest to listen to you bitch at me about irrelevant bullshit.”

 

“Okay,” Ed said. “So that’s your position on the matter. Bearing in mind that you have asked quite a substantial thing of me and I have done it, your position is that this is irrelevant bullshit and you don’t want to discuss it.”

“On what matter? On what fucking matter, Edward? I have no position. I haven’t prepared one. You’ve just… invented a problem and sprung it on me out of nowhere. I wasn’t aware I was being subpoenaed to trial in _my own fucking hotel room_.”

“Just answer the question, please,” Ed said.

“I will not.”

“Answer it,” Ed said. “And I’ll go away.”

 

The President stared at him before he answered. He closed his eyes and took a breath. He looked like he was crisis managing, Ed thought, and he probably was. Ed definitely felt like a crisis. He hunched tighter but all it did was make him feel even more spring-loaded. He knew something had to explode here and it would probably be him.

 

“No, I didn’t,” the President said, finally. “I did not, in fact, fuck Thomas. Happy?”

“But you were trying to.”

“You said you’d drop it.”

“So?”

“Oh for…” the President said. “For fuck’s sake, Edward.”

 

“You were,” Ed said.

“Of course I was trying to. And as you so astutely identified, that’s none of your fucking business.”

“It’s my business when you make me help you do it. It’s my business when I’m trying to figure out how I’m supposed to believe all the stuff you said to me yesterday, and the day before, about Maine, when you could do that, and when you’re doing this.”

“Because that was a completely different situation. And also it was your job. _Why are we talking about this_?”

“I’m not your employee anymore,” Ed said. “I was then, sure, sort of, but I’m not now, and even in that context, that was… it was just a shitty thing to do. Do you get that? Do you know how shitty that was? Because right now I don’t think you do.”

 

The President seemed to be putting himself through his crisis management pattern again. His voice got slower. He forced it back into normal registers. It seemed like it was hard for him to do that and like he was calling up skills he didn’t particularly want to use. “This isn’t how you want to spend the first day of our brand new life together,” he said. “Wind yourself down and go and get dressed.”

 

“Don’t give me commands,” Ed said. “Don’t. Please. Not now.”

“If you’re not going to control yourself, I’m going to tell you to.”

“God, you’re an asshole,” Ed snapped. “If you’re not going to say anything decent about this at least just stop saying asshole stuff. Just shut up.”

 

At that, the President dropped all pretense of gentility. Ed saw him do it. He looked like he was relaxing. Like he had something else in him he was giving permission to take the lead. His eyes followed Ed’s face like a predator. “What elegant wording,” he drawled. It had malice in it. He was going to fight now. Finally.

 

Ed wasn’t scared. “Shut up. Nobody’s impressed. You’re just… you’re worse than… you’re Robert fucking Baratheon. Getting your servants to bring you boys and wine at all hours of the night. And I did it. I just… did it.”

“Did you make me watch that show just so you could make that awful reference?”

“Shut up.”

“Stop telling me to shut up,” the President said. “I’m warning you, stop that right now. Nobody tells me to shut up. Not ever.”

“More people should.”

“Why you… you little shit!”

“I’m nearly 40!”

“My god, what is _wrong_ with you?”

 

“You are!” Ed snapped. “You’re what’s wrong! I quit my _job_ and I don’t even _know_.”

 

“You don’t know what?” the President said, harshly.

“I don’t _know_.”

“ _What_ , Edward? _What_ don’t you know?”

 

Ed’s fists were in balls under his armpits. There was a roaring sound in his ears. “If you’re even serious or you’re just fucking… tired. If you just… need something to do and right now I’m it!”

 

He stunned himself saying that. He guessed he wasn’t the only one stunned either, because the President was staring at him like he wanted to see what his next trick would be.

Well, he didn’t have one. He just had Ed. “You’ll get bored,” he said. “You already are bored. You said I know you and I do, and you’re not… you’re not like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like this.”

“Like _what_?”

“Like _this_.”

“This is going nowhere,” the President said. “It’s a stupid, circular argument, and it’s not one I’m going to have with you. Get out of here and take control of yourself.”

 

“It’s not an argument,” Ed said. “I’m not arguing with you. I’m asking you a question and you’re not answering it because you just don’t understand the gravity of the situation, and I guess neither did I, because I’ve made a huge, stupid mistake.”

“You’ve certainly made a huge, stupid mistake starting this conversation.”

“Shut up,” Ed said.

“Don’t you dare.”

“Well didn’t I? Why’d you do it? If you thought like that about me then, if I could just not matter like that, how come it’s different now?”

 

“Oh for… You wouldn’t have wanted to anyway,” the President said.

“What?”

“I wasn’t in the best shape of my life, Edward. I’m still not, but I think we can both agree that that was perhaps an all-time rock bottom.”

“What the fuck are you even talking about?”

“Look, just never mind,” the President said. “I’m sorry. I apologize.” He sounded exasperated, and like he was trying to cram his malice back into its cage but it was resisting. The strain of that was audible.

 

The President was trying, Ed thought. He was earnestly trying, and it embarrassed Ed that he’d pushed him so far. Under all that vibrating, sick tension, he registered that. He tried to choke down his own crisis situation, but he couldn’t swallow it. He wanted to swallow it so much he almost gagged, but he couldn’t. “It just… doesn’t help anything.”

“I appreciate that. But I do. Apologize, that is.”

 

Ed just glared at him. He didn’t know what he wanted to do. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. He wished he wasn’t wearing a dressing gown.

 

“Darling,” the President said, wearily. “I don’t usually apologize.”

 

Ed assumed that was meant to be extenuating, or at least mildly endearing. It wasn’t. “So what?” he said, belligerently, and the President rolled his eyes. He leaned forward, slid a cigarette out of his pack, and lit it. That gesture was definitely intended to suggest he was done talking.

 

Ed didn’t care. “Are you allowed to smoke in here?”

 

“I’m allowed to do whatever the fuck I want,” the President said. “If they’re not going to send me to jail for High Treason, they sure won’t do it for smoking.”

“They might still send you to jail for that. Treason. Probably not smoking.”

“They won’t,” the President said. “The moment has passed. I’m disgraced but exonerated. I’ll live it down in my dotage. Raking it up again would remind everyone I was pardoned for it. That’s not what Claire wants.”

 

“Like Nixon,” Ed said. He wondered if someone would come to interview the President in a year or two. He wondered if he’d watch. He wondered if he even wanted to know everything. He suspected he didn’t.

 

The President was not amused by the comparison. “Alright, Edward,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

“Well, I mean… just… strategic resignation.”

“That’s not what you meant and you know it.”

“Sorry,” Ed said, grudgingly.

“I’ll accept your apology if you accept mine.”

“No.”

 

“Oh, for God’s sake,” the President said. “Also I’m not the first President to break the law, and I won’t be the last.”

“Yeah, Nixon did.”

“Reagan certainly did,” the President said. “The only reason he got away with it is because Oliver North fell on his sword. Clinton, obviously. All of them did it. All the time. Not just Nixon.”

“Not mitigating. Also, I don’t care. Not the issue. Not what we’re talking about.”

“What are we talking about again?”

“How come you did that with Tom. To me.”

 

The President arched an eyebrow. He crossed one of his legs over the other. He leaned back again, like he was anchoring himself, and looked Ed up and down once more. There was less aggression in it this time though. Ed thought. Marginally less.

 

“I don’t have a good answer to that,” the President said.

“Then why should I assume it’s not just going to happen again?”

“Because it won’t. And you knew that yesterday, apparently. But not today.”

“I didn’t. I just wasn’t allowed to say it yesterday.”

“What do you mean ‘allowed’?”

“You really don’t understand, do you?”

“Suppose I don’t. Would you explain?”

 

Ed sighed. He folded his arms around himself. “I don’t think I can.”

“Surely you can try.”

“I am trying.”

“I want you with me, Edward,” the President said. “Does that help? Only you. Nobody else. However I might have behaved in the past.”

“Yeah but that’s not…”

“Because of how I feel about you.”

“I know but…”

“Which is strongly, Edward. Very strongly.”

 

As endearing as the President’s Regency novel non-declarations had been two days ago, Ed was tired of them now. And of this discussion, and the way everything in it was a weird dance around things he wasn’t supposed to say and around what his new position actually was and what he was allowed to ask from it. He was exhausted by it, just generally actually physically exhausted by every single part of it. The cold, nervous energy he’d been running on had dissipated without his noticing, and he was still wearing a dressing gown. And he needed a shower.

 

And a drink, actually. He wanted exactly six beers followed by going back to bed for about a week in his own apartment. That’s how tired he was. He wanted to stamp his foot and go home. He couldn’t bring himself to be nice about it either. “And for the first time since the ’86 World Series, I cried,” he said, bitterly. “I cried like a big dumb homo.”

 

The President snorted. “What on Earth?”

“That’s what you sound like right now,” Ed said. “You sound like Dennis Duffy. Upscale Dennis Duffy.”

“I don’t know who Dennis Duffy is, I don’t understand the reference.”

“It’s… never mind,” Ed said. “I just mean… I don’t know, it’s not even a good reference. I mean that even your romantic statements are kind of insulting.”

 

It took the President a long time to respond to that. Ed knew he’d be mad, but he was too tired to care about that either. He watched the President’s reaction flicker over his face and felt indifferent to it. He listed in his head what he would have to do to get out of here. He hadn’t unpacked much, it wouldn’t take him long to get ready to leave. What a fucking idiot he’d been.

 

“I see you’re intending to be a pain in my ass for the entire night,” the President said, finally.

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Who is Dennis Duffy?”

“He’s Liz Lemon’s shitty Irish boyfriend on 30 Rock.”

“What’s 30 Rock?”

“Oh come on,” Ed said. “It’s TV.”

“Yes, well, Edward, being the President of the United States doesn’t leave a person a lot of time to watch television.”

“Well, _excuuuuse_ me,” Ed said. He knew what it sounded like but he didn’t give a shit.

“You haven’t said anything strictly declarative either.”

“I don’t have to,” Ed said. “I already declared I’m moving to Maine with you.”

 

He’d said that accidentally. He’d wanted to keep it in reserve for just this one conversation, he’d wanted to announce he was going to think it over, and he wanted that to be true too, as if he really would. But he hadn’t reserved it. Because, he supposed, he had in fact already completely decided he was moving to Maine, no takebacks, and he couldn’t even make himself lie about it.

 

It pissed him off he couldn’t. How stupidly fucking in love he was. There was nothing romantic about it at this point, it was just annoying. He scowled.

 

The President gave a deep sigh. “Are you still moving to Maine?”

“Yes,” Ed said.

“Even with this issue about Thomas.”

“That’s why it’s an issue.”

“Why now? Why not yesterday? Why not later?”

“Because I need to know.”

“And I’ve told you.”

“Well say it more.”

“And what, specifically, should I say?”

“Maybe that you’re actually sorry.”

“I did. Twice.”

“Not like you understood.”

“That’s because I don’t understand, Edward. I had a lapse in romantic judgment, you did your job at the time, and nothing came of it for either of us. If you want me to say I’m sorry again, then fine, I’ll say it, but I don’t understand what else you want.”

 

“Really?” Ed said. “You can’t understand why getting me to… fetch a guy for you might be, uh… humiliating in a way that would stick with me, so to speak, in this situation, where I _quit my job to move to fucking Maine with you_. _Sir._ ”

 

Reverting to ‘sir’ was not an accident this time, and the President noticed. “Oh please,” he said, airily flicking his cigarette into his glass. “If it was that humiliating for you, you could have told me that at the time. You didn’t.”

“Yeah, okay,  _you were the President_. You’re also… you. Can you just… imagine for me how that might have gone down if I’d said to you, hey look, Mr. President, I know it’s my job to do whatever the fuck you tell me to do whenever you fucking want but given our secret sort-of-sometimes-relationship I’m never allowed to mention to you and that has no logical rules whatsoever, I’m not that comfortable about escorting a smug pseudointellectual hipster into your bedchambers so you can see if he’ll fuck you out of your midlife crisis.”

 

The President’s eyes went wide with shock about halfway through Ed’s second sentence. They stayed like that when he spoke. “Jesus fucking Christ, Meechum.”

 

“Yeah, well,” Ed said. He kept his arms folded and his own gaze steady.

 

“When is the good cop getting here?” the President said. “I have to assume someone’s going to show up and offer me a deal if I co-operate.”

“Shut up.”

“You’re sailing  _very_  close to the wind here, Edward.”

“What do you mean? You mean you’ll uninvite me to Maine? That you’re already bored with me? That’s  _what I’m asking you_. That's actually what this  _whole conversation is about._ ”

“No I’m not saying that. I’m simply… would you just… wind yourself down a little bit please?”

“No.”

"Oh, for God's sake."

“I quit my job,” Ed said. “I’m not _staff_ anymore.”

 

The President sighed again. It was long and slow and he put his whole body into it. He dropped his whole cigarette into his glass this time. Ed heard it fizzling out as he put it down.

“Look,” the President said. “I do see. I do see how that hurt you.”

“Yeah, it did.”

“I don’t enjoy thinking about this. I don’t enjoy the feeling that I’m responsible for that. I do care about you. And I did then too.”

“Well, you still did it. And I don’t get why. And I need to know why for this to… I just…”

“I don’t _know_ why,” the President said. “What do you want me to say? You’re probably right about it, take your own explanation as read. I hate thinking about it, can we just… let it go?”

“It’s not good enough.”

“I understand that you must have felt… discarded. Unimportant to me. Like what we’d had didn’t matter. Like you didn’t matter. Like I’d used you to perform a service.”

“Pretty much.”

“And yet you were still willing to… start things up again. Why?”

“You can’t possibly be that dumb,” Ed said. “Why the fuck do you think?”

 

The President made a pained, sheepish expression. “I don’t really deserve you, do I?”

“Let’s not go that far. Stay with the issue at hand if you can, thanks.”

“Alright, sorry. I’m sorry. I am… trying.”

“Good.”

“What can I possibly say to make you see that I am sorry for that?”

“Say that and mean it.”

“And that will do it?”

“I don’t know,” Ed said. “But it’s what I want.”

 

“Well then I’m deeply sorry,” the President said. “Deeply and profoundly sorry.”

“Okay.”

“Does that help?”

“You need to stop asking me that.”

“I’m sorry, I just…”

 

The President’s reaction was such a confused and distressed facial expression that Ed took pity on him. “Do you understand what this is about?”

“I think so. But… tell me.”

“It’s not about Tom. I could not give a single shit about Tom. It’s about you and me.”

“Alright.”

“It’s about… if you put me in my place like that, if you do that again, if you keep doing it… if you’re thinking that’s what this is gonna be, then this isn’t going to work. I won’t take that.”

“No. And you shouldn’t have to.”

“Yeah, but that’s what you did. Just now. Before.”

 

“Oh,” the President said. “Well.”

“You can’t just… dismiss me.”

“I didn’t mean to do that, Edward.”

“Yeah but you did.”

“Alright. Alright, yes. I’m sorry.”

“I can’t… I can’t live like that anymore, in that kind of grey area. Where I don’t know what I am to you. I just can’t. You don’t… you don’t know what that was like.”

 

It hurt him to say that. He wished he hadn’t said it, actually. It was far too close to the truth and it felt like it took a layer of skin with it when it left his body. He hunched up again. But the President saw it. His hand shot out and grabbed Ed’s and held it. “It’s alright. It’s alright, darling. I’m listening to you. I’m here.”

 

Ed’s heart seized on him so hard he coughed. The impact of that touch was shocking. It seemed like genuine care, quick and instinctive, aware of his presence in a very personal way. He wanted to forget about everything and press his face into the President’s chest and weep. But he didn’t. He made himself keep talking. “So, the apology matters. But just. Other things matter more.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Do you?” Ed said.

 

“You’re my boyfriend, I think,” the President said, squeezing his hand. “I think that’s the title. Saying that makes me feel about seventeen years old, but I think it’s the term. God.”

“Okay,” Ed said.

“I don’t mind feeling seventeen years old at the moment,” the President said. “It beats the alternative.”

“Yeah.”

“So do you want to go steady?”

Ed snorted. “Sure.”

 

The President cleared his throat. “I don’t really know what else to say here.”

“I don’t either,” Ed said.

“Really?”

“It means something to me that you… I don’t know.”

“That we… argued about it?”

“Yeah. I guess? I don’t know. I feel… I don’t know. I’m really tired.”

 

“Oh, Edward,” the President said, sadly, fondly. He squeezed Ed’s hand again. He cupped Ed’s cheek. “You have the most serious, serious face. All the time.”

 

Ed shrugged. He smiled as well as he could, which probably wasn’t very well, but he did mean it. Or he thought he did. “You’re always so serious,” the President said. “That’s always how you…”

 

He looked, Ed thought, like he was thinking, hard. And he was, apparently. “I knew,” he said. “I knew what I was doing.”

“What?” Ed said.

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“Wait, did…?”

“I am sorry, darling. I’m… I’m really very sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Ed said.

“Is it?”

“No,” Ed said. “But yes.”

 

The President stared at Ed a little longer. He stroked his face, his hair. He wrapped an arm around him and pulled him in. He kissed the top of his head. Ed closed his eyes. He heard the President sigh, felt him drop his hand out of Ed’s, and then he figured he’d picked up his glass with that hand because he heard him say, “fuck,” and then, “I put my cigarette out in my drink.”

 

“I saw,” Ed said. He opened his eyes in time to catch the end of the President’s expression. It wasn’t as simple as annoyance. He looked agitated.

 

“Do you want something?” the President said. “Stay there and I’ll get you something.”

“Just give me a minute.”

“Well, I’m having something. Something besides this… Blanton’s and cigarette. Disgusting.”

 

“Okay,” Ed said. He got it, he thought. He’d known the President long enough to understand this, this need to correct the world after a destabilization. “You do that,” he said, closing his eyes. “I need a minute. We can talk more I just… need a minute.”

 

He wrapped his arms around himself and pulled his knees up and his body felt warm. Grimy still, just sticky and alcoholic and gross, but he was too tired to do anything about it, and the warmth seemed like the most pressing thing. He felt the President get off the sofa, heard him clinking around. Heard him make a very short phonecall in which all he said was that he’d speak to the recipient tomorrow. Heard him stacking papers. He felt more at ease with those sounds around him. He had no idea how much of anything they’d actually resolved, but he felt better, somehow, just being here and hearing the President’s officious noises. His heart felt slower. It’d been so fast, he realized. He hadn’t known how fast. He thought maybe he needed to sleep again. He drifted.

 

He came back to himself when he heard water running at volume in the bathroom. “I’m running you a bath,” the President called, to Ed, as if he knew Ed was conscious of it.

“What? Why?” Ed called back.

“Why do you think?”

“Because you’re planning to drown me?”

“Because you need it. I’ll take you to dinner after.”

“We can just get room service or, I don’t know, something delivered.”

“If you prefer. Come in here.”

 

Ed didn’t resist. He didn’t feel like resisting, there wasn’t any point to it. It was warm in the bathroom, humid. Steam was rising from the bath and fogging the mirror. It looked clean in here, and soothing. It looked like something he wanted to accept.

 

The President got up from where he was sitting on the edge of the bath and stepped over to him. He took Ed’s dressing gown off him, and Ed let him do it, shucking his shoulders to help. The President hung it on the hook next to the door. “Listen,” he said. “Things are going to be alright. As soon as it’s humanly possible, I’m taking you away from all of this. I closed on a property today and we’ll go there as soon as events and the demands of the law allow.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Come on. Get in. That’s right, darling.”

 

It all felt bizarre to Ed, but he did get in. He shimmied off his shorts and when the President turned off the taps, he stepped into the bath. Somehow, it was the exact right temperature. Ed thought that might have been because he was numb to whatever the temperature actually was.

 

Once he’d got into the bath, the President perched on the edge of it again, behind his head. Ed leaned back. He heard rustling, glass clinking. Then he heard the President popping a cork.

 

He didn’t turn around. Surely champagne in the bath in an expensive hotel was too ridiculous to be real. Then again, what about any of this wasn’t? He closed his eyes. Momentarily the President pressed a cold glass into his hand. “The property is in Rockland. That’s about halfway up the coast. Right in the middle. The town looked… nice, I suppose. We’ll have to get some flannel, we’ll fit right in.”

“What’ll I do for work there?”

“Whatever you want to do. If it’s even anything. Financially speaking it doesn’t really matter.”

 

Ed wasn’t sure he could adjust to that without negotiation. It seemed like it was one of those things it was important not to get steamrolled on. He wished he’d bought his place, or a place, so he’d be coming at this whole thing from more of an Established Adult angle. He was old enough for that, whatever his mother said, and he’d meant to do that eventually, he just hadn’t. He knew _why_ he hadn’t – he didn’t do well at imagining himself in the future, and he hadn’t for a long time – but he regretted it anyway.

 

He hadn’t checked on his savings in a while, though he guessed they must be okay. What did he spend them on anyway? Pretty much nothing. “I guess they must have cops there.”

“Whatever you like except that.”

“What?” Ed said.

“I don’t want… nothing dangerous.”

“What?” Ed said, again.

 

“I don’t want to argue,” the President said.

“This is an argument though,” Ed said. “Sorry.”

“Well look, alright, fair enough, but please let’s have the argument another time. Tomorrow if you want, but not now. Please.”

 

Ed frowned. He frowned until the President leaned over and tapped the side of Ed’s glass with his finger. Prompted, Ed took a sip. It was nice, it actually tasted good. He hadn’t anticipated there’d be an actual difference between real champagne and sparkling wine, but there was.

 

While he was thinking about that, and thinking about how to respond to the President’s blithe dictation of what his job would be, the President dipped a washcloth into the water, and then, slowly, he started washing Ed’s chest. He did it in soft strokes, very gentle. It felt more like petting to Ed than anything practical and he wanted to say something about that too, but then he didn’t. It didn’t matter really. He could just shower after.

 

“What an eventful couple of days,” the President said.

 

Ed didn’t say anything to that either. It was hard to concentrate against the feel of the water, the feel of those gentle touches, the wine on his tongue. He mumbled a vague agreeing noise.

 

“Do you feel any better?” the President asked. “I didn’t ask. How’s your head?”

“It’s fine.”

“You don’t still feel sick?”

“No,” Ed said. “Just tired.”

“I’m not surprised. Lift up your arm.”

 

Ed just did what he was told. With the other arm too. And forward for his back. He tilted his head back when he was asked, felt water being poured over his hair, something rubbed into it, presumably shampoo. He closed his eyes. Having the President bathe him like a doll was bizarre, but it was also kind of nice. He did feel worn out, in addition to grimy. And he was glad of the company, actually. He might have fallen asleep in there otherwise.

 

Besides, he thought it made sense. The President was nearly sixty, and touching a man like this, being allowed to do that… if he wanted to fawn over Ed’s body like a new toy, Ed didn’t mind right now. And maybe he was reading too much into things, but on the off chance he wasn’t, it was okay.

 

He had a stab of deep affection for the President at that thought. For the President’s stubbornly articulated and yet profoundly vulnerable expressions of want. “That’s nice,” he said, when the President had finished rinsing out his hair. He said it intending to make peace.

 

“Is it? Good.”

“Do you want to get in?”

“It’s tempting,” the President said. “It’s very tempting. Perhaps another time. Perhaps tomorrow, in fact.”

“Will we be here tomorrow?”

 

“Here’s what I think,” the President said. “I think tomorrow, we ought to try our best to amuse ourselves exclusively. We can stay here if you like, we could go somewhere else. I don’t think we can leave DC immediately, but within reason we can move around in it.”

“I guess we can stay here?”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s pretty fucking fancy.”

“I think you need downtime,” the President said. “I think you need it desperately. I do have to do some things, but I promise to do them less… badly.”

 

Ed let that be the truth and didn’t correct it.

 

“I’m sorry, Edward. I should have anticipated. Today, I mean. Specifically.”

 

Ed let that be the truth as well.

 

“There’s a lot to talk about, isn’t there?”

“Yeah,” Ed said.

“And I think we need a few hours alone. To do the things that lovers do when they’re alone.”

 

He said that so matter-of-factly that Ed almost giggled. Not laughed, actually giggled. If he’d had a better sense of space and how much strength he needed, and been less tired, he’d have tried to pull the President into the bath in his clothes. “You mean fucking.”

“Not exclusively, but yes, also fucking.”

“Okay,” Ed said. “If you want.”

“I do want.”

“Well then sure.”

“Are you hungry?” the President said. “Do you want to go down to eat? I’d like that, if you would.”

“Okay.”

“Unless you’d really rather stay here,” the President added, graciously.

“I’m game,” Ed said. “I’ve got clothes.”

“Do you have… something that isn’t a work suit or sweatpants? I don’t mind, I’m just wondering.”

“I have a recreation outfit.”

“Do you have the sweater I got for you?”

 

Ed did start to laugh this time. He was too tired not to. “Frank,” he said, “you can’t dress me. That’s… I can dress myself.”

“I know you can, Edward, that isn’t what I meant.”

“Yeah it is.”

 

Ed couldn’t see the President’s face from where he was, but he could definitely picture it.


	10. Chapter 10

At dinner, the President held Ed’s hand over the table. Almost as soon as they’d sat down, he shot his hand out and grabbed Ed’s. It surprised him. He hadn’t imagined a world in which the President touched him like a lover in a public place, however much they’d talked about moving states together. That still felt like a dream. This did too, but this was happening.

 

Across the table, the President’s eyes were wide, halfway between happiness and abject terror. Ed held his hand back. It felt like they were holding hands before jumping. Then, almost instantly, it just felt good. It felt like one good, safe, real thing in this near empty restaurant room, where the perimeter was marked by Ed’s former colleagues and it was holding back the tidal wave of the entire world.

 

The President ordered for them, showing off. Maine lobster salad (“because obviously”), and foie gras pâté, and a lamb thing, and duck. Ed had no idea whether those things would go together as a meal, but he suspected they probably wouldn’t. From the description alone they seemed like clashing tastes, and he was starting to get the distinct impression that the President didn’t – and no judgment, he didn’t either – know a single real thing about proper food and how to eat it. When he ordered, it seemed like he knew just enough to sound like he knew what he was talking about and Ed wondered again where he’d aped his choices from, but he didn’t actually know. Ed was almost sure of that.

 

He didn’t mind though. He didn’t care what the President ordered. It was hard to care about what they’d be eating in this situation. The President might have been used to public spaces made ostensibly private by nothing other than buffer zones of security, but Ed wasn’t, or at least wasn’t used to being inside of them instead of enforcing them. He wondered if it was possible to get used to it, whether the President really had, or if it was like the food and he just faked it. The weirdness of the situation pressed on him, made him want to interrogate it and draw conclusions about it, but exhaustion stopped him. He was grateful for that, in a way.

 

In all honesty he was grateful for the buffer too. However weird it was being guarded by former workmates (he hoped they’d at least gotten some sleep), he didn’t want to be news tonight if he didn’t have to be. He didn’t want to have to consider the rest of the world in addition to everything that was happening to him personally. He knew he was kidding himself that they wouldn’t be news tonight anyway, but right now he wanted to kid himself.

 

He especially wanted to because he kept thinking about his mother. He kept seeing her taking out the newspaper for painting, spreading it over the floor in the kitchen, and there Ed would be, holding hands with the former President in front of the whole damn world. She’d have to know soon because the Washington grapevine would already be working, and if she didn’t read it herself or see it on the tv someone in New Haven would tell her and if she didn’t know before then she’d be hurt. He had no idea what to say to her about it. He had no idea how you started a conversation you’d been avoiding for forty years.

 

The President squeezed his hand. “Alright?”

 

Ed blinked. When he did, he realized he was blinking away tears. He had no idea where they’d come from either. Pure exhaustion, he guessed. “Yeah,” he said.

“I like your recreation outfit.”

“Thanks.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Everything.”

 

The President snorted. “Yes, I know what you mean.” He brought his other hand over the top of Ed’s and stroked there. It was calming. Somehow. Even here, it was calming.

 

“I’m suddenly really hungry,” Ed said. “Maybe it’s hangover still?”

“Maybe. All you had was a sandwich.”

“And breakfast.”

“Not very much.”

“Well, maybe it’s just that then.”

“It was little bird’s breakfast, honestly. A forest fawn’s.”

“It’s actually… kind of weird that you’re feeding me.”

 

The President froze like Ed had caught him stealing cookies. “I’m not actually _feeding_ you,” he said, indignantly. “I just ordered for you. I’m the one who asked you to dinner. There’s an etiquette to these things.”

“You did this morning. You actually fed me from your fork.”

“You were sick!”

“But I’m not… it’s not _bad_ , it’s just weird.”

“What’s so weird about it,” the President demanded.

 

Ed laughed. “Never mind.”

“No, go on. I clearly wasn’t aware I was doing anything.”

“You’re pretty defensive for someone who wasn’t doing anything.”

“Look, officer,” the President said, “it’s just nice to care for you a little bit. That’s all there is to it. If you don’t like it, I won’t do it, but it’s not as weird as you’re making it seem.”

 

“That’s really sweet,” Ed said.

“Yes well. You’re really sweet.”

“This is just. So bizarre.”

 

“What is?” the President said. He still sounded defensive.

“Your going from refusing to even admit why you asked me to move states to your… feeding me like a baby bird and all these compliments. I still don’t believe this is reality. This is a dream. I’m obviously going to wake up any minute.”

 

“It’s flattering to think you’d dream about me,” the President said.

“I have,” Ed told him, matter-of-factly. “Often. All the time. I basically never don’t think about you, even when I’m asleep. So. There you go.”

“That’s very gratifying.”

“You’re so fucking odd,” Ed said.

 

The President reacted to that with absolute shock. “I am a lot of things, Edward, but ‘odd’ is certainly not one of them.”

“You sure are. Nobody ever tells you this because you’re Mr. President and calling the President odd is probably high treason or something, but you’re just… a seriously odd man. A Grade-A oddball.”

“My god!” the President said. “I’d be embarrassed to be anything so innocuously… soft. Unbelievable! Odd? Really?”

 

“You’re just…” Ed said. Then he started laughing again. Then he found it hard to stop. Being this tired made everything a little harder to stay on top of, he figured. And the President looked so affronted. “God, is that how my biographers will remember me? As ‘odd’?”

 

“You had no problem just… instructing me to move states,” Ed said. “And you expected I’d just… do it. Because you said so. And then you’re… you’re touchingly surprised I had cast my mind upon you favorably or whatever fucking way you’d put it, as if you hadn’t anticipated that at all. That’s objectively odd. You’re so odd.”

“I don’t feel like explaining my psychology to you, Edward. Just take the compliment.”

“Is it a psychological thing?”

“Who knows? Who cares? I don’t put stock in that stuff anyway. It’s all either snake oil or plain old excuses for laziness.”

 

He said that so pompously that Ed laughed even harder. The President glared at him. “I’ve gone from leader of the free world to ‘Grade-A oddball’,” he said. “That’s so depressing.”

“Yeah, but we’re moving to Maine to fuck a lot.”

“That’s true. That cheers things up.”

 

It didn’t look like it had actually cheered anything up. Ed squeezed his hand this time. “You okay?”

“You keep asking me that. And the answer is yes. But also no, obviously, and also I have no fucking idea what I am by any metric. I didn’t plan for life after the White House and yet here we are. It’s not reality for me either.”

“That makes sense,” Ed said, squeezing his hand again. “It’s gotta be a pretty unique sensation.”

“You can do whatever you want, in a dream,” the President said. “Complete freedom from any consequences. Maybe that’s why.”

“Maybe.”

“And maybe it’s just that it’s… the first time… for… hmm.”

 

Ed waited, but the President didn’t elaborate. Ed didn’t really need him to though, he wasn’t an idiot. The President stared into the distance until the waiter bought their drinks and then he changed the subject, but Ed kept hold of his hand. It was bigger than his. He didn’t know why he noticed that now, but he did.

 

“Do you think they meant to make Syrio Florel so… Princess Bride?” the President asked him, picking up his drink with his spare hand. It was transparent but Ed answered it anyway.

“He’s bald in the books.”

“Yes I know, that was in the part I read.”

“I don’t know,” Ed said. “I guess… you know, there’s only so many models for… quippy sword guy with accent.”

“You may be right.”

“Is the fighting right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like period accurate.”

 

“What period?” the President said, dryly. “It’s all over the shop. Wars of the Roses storyline but it really can’t make up its mind whether it’s set in 1400 or 1100.”

“So does that mean it is, or it isn’t?”

“I don’t know,” said the President. “I don’t really know anything about fencing. My knowledge of military history is much more… strategy based. I did used to read about weaponry, but never as much. Not my area.”

“Right.”

“Can you play chess?” the President asked.

“Sure,” Ed said. “I mean, not well, but yeah, I know the rules.”

“I’m interested in strategy,” the President said. “I always have been. It’s not… it must feel a little presumptuous to you. I went to military college, but I never served, all I know about it is theory.”

“Being the President is serving,” Ed said.

“Is it?”

 

“I don’t know about strategy,” Ed said. He picked up his own drink. It was a perfectly fine bourbon, and he was glad he’d let the President pick it. “If I did, I’d probably have… well anyway, I’m a Terminal Lance. I’m good at doing what I’m told.”

“Smutty,” the President said. Ed laughed.

 

“What does that mean, Terminal Lance,” the President asked him.

“It means I never went any higher than Lance Corporal, and then I left.”

“Did you want to get higher?” the President asked him. “Do the marines work like the rest of the armed forces? Would you have had to go to officer school?”

“Not for NCO,” Ed said. “So yes.”

“Yes you did, or yes they do.”

“Yes they do. There’s a whole system of merit-based promotion for NCO but that’s normal, right? I don’t know, I’ve never done a comparative investigation.”

“But you didn’t want to do that?”

“Like I said. I’m good at following orders.”

 

“I think that’s a reductive analysis of yourself,” the President said. “You are, yes, but not exclusively, not in the way you’re presenting it.”

“How am I presenting it?”

“You know what really interests me is that you left when you did,” the President said. “Given your age, and when you were at college, and where you served, you were in for quite a while. Long enough for it to be something of an abrupt career change when you left.”

 

“I guess,” Ed said. “Not really. A lot of people leave after two tours. This is a pretty specific line of questioning. Is there something you want to know?”

“Nothing really,” the President said. “Just about you, I suppose. I’m trying to… it’s a little bit ham-fisted.”

 

He seemed embarrassed. Ed felt for him. “It’s okay.”

“How’s that for dream logic?” the President said. “Thinking it would be a good idea to just… date. I told you I was too old. I haven’t been on a date like this in about thirty years.”

 

Ed thought he understood that. He smiled at him. “Neither have I. Well. Twenty years.”

“That’s ridiculous,” the President said. “You must date all the time.”

“No I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t.”

“I don’t believe it. You flirt far too well for someone who doesn’t date.”

“Yeah, well. I do other stuff.”

 

That made the President’s face light up. “Oh yes, your sexploits,” he said, like he thought it was funny or charming. Ed guessed it was if you used that word for it. He felt a defensive prickle at first but it faded, because anything that made the President that happy and sure of himself seemed okay right now.

 

A waiter had started to put plates onto the table and Ed nodded thanks at him. That waiter was looking at them like a zoo exhibit, even if he was clearly trying not to. Ed didn’t care. He was too tired to care about anything right now except the President. They’d stopped holding hands to allow for things to be presented to them, but Ed followed his gaze anyway. He kept his eyes on his face, as if he was still touching him.

 

“So how does one go about sexploiting in 2017?” the President asked him, once they were alone again. At the President’s gesture, Ed plucked out a bite of lobster with his fork. It tasted fine. He could have been eating chicken breast and vegetable matter, he wouldn’t have cared, but it tasted fine.

“Huh?”

“Let’s say I was a fit, good-looking twink and I wanted to get myself taken care of, let’s say it’s the weekend, what would…”

“I’m almost 40.”

“A fit, fetching, 40 year old twink…”

“That’s not a thing.”

“… and I wanted a no-strings erotic adventure, what would I do?”

 

Ed managed not to laugh. “I use an app,” he said.

“On your phone?”

“Yes.”

“I see. How does it work?”

“You’ve never heard of a dating app?”

“I’ve never been in a situation where that would have been practical. There are other, more appropriate methods for a person in my position. Methods that are more discreet.”

“Do you know you sound like a Bond villain?” Ed said.

 

The President didn’t seem offended by that at all. He spread some pâté on a toast, ate it in one bite, then picked up his glass again. “Just tell me how it works.”

 

“I don’t know,” Ed said. “It’s like… you put some basic details on a profile then you see if anybody’s nearby and you see if you match with anybody and if you do you chat and then maybe meet up.”

“And then what? Just have sex with each other?”

“Yeah?”

“But not go on dates.”

“You can.”

“But you don’t?”

“No,” Ed said.

 

He took another little bite of lobster. He was warming up to it. He hadn’t had lobster since last summer at home, and they didn’t do it like this there. He thought maybe he’d like that about Maine, eating lobster. He hadn’t thought about any of that yet, about Maine, specifically, and what it would be like.

 

“Can I look at it?” the President asked.

“At what?”

“Your app.”

“Are you kidding me? No.”

“Why not!”

“Just not in a million years.”

“I just want to see how it works.”

“You can have your own Grindr now you’re not in office anymore.”

“I don’t think that will be possible, Edward, as you know very well. Now please let me see your sex app immediately.”

“No way.”

 

The President pouted. “What did you do before you had that?”

“What does anybody do?”

“Why don’t you date?”

“Why do you care?”

“You’re no fun _at all_.”

“Nope, I’m boring.”

“It’s called Grindr?”

“Yep,” Ed said.

“So, will you be using it in the upcoming, ah, interval or…”

 

Ed smiled. Or smirked, really. It felt like a smirk. “Wasn’t planning on it,” he said, without looking up.

“I wouldn’t make any… demands.”

“Didn’t think you would.”

“I’m sure there would be a lot of lumberjacks.”

“Probably.”

“Lobstermen.”

“Stephen King.”

“Do you think he has Grindr?”

 

Ed laughed. He didn’t know it was going to burst out of him until it did. It was such a stupid, earnest donkey laugh and loud enough that probably everyone within a mile’s radius could hear it, but the President looked like he didn’t mind. In fact, he looked like things were going exactly his way. It wasn’t even the joke Ed was laughing at either, it was the unbelievable stupidness of this conversation, and the fact that he was having it with the President, on a date, in a restaurant. Ridiculous.

 

“We can check when we get there if you want,” Ed said, and the President laughed too. He reached across the table and brushed Ed’s cheek and curled his fingers around the back of his neck for a second before letting go. It was so fond. Ed felt warm from it. He had to look down at the table to gather himself. “You’re gonna like Blackwater,” he said. He wasn’t sure why he said that. He just wanted to tell the President something else he’d like.

 

“What?” the President said. He’d reclaimed his hand. He spread Ed a toast and handed it to him. Ed ate it and did not point out that, once again, the President was feeding him. It too tasted approximately fine.

 

“In season three,” he said, when he was done chewing. “In Game of Thrones. They have a big… it’s an attack on King’s Landing, from the sea, from Blackwater Bay. It’s. It’s good. It’s accurate in a really… I don’t know, in a way you’ll like. I think.”

“I’m sure I will.”

“And Cersei’s really good especially.”

“Cersei?”

“She gets good,” Ed said. “I mean, bad, but good.”

“What about Joffrey?”

“No, he’s just bad bad.”

“You’re spoiling,” the President said. “We might make it to the first season finale tonight, and I want it to be fresh for me. I don’t want to know what happens in other seasons.”

“We will, I think. Last episode I mean.”

“I’ve enjoyed this, Edward. Watching this with you.”

 

Ed couldn’t stop thinking about what it had looked like to his guys in the room when the President had touched his face. And they could ask – they had asked – the hotel staff to be as discreet as possible but Ed knew texts would be flying all over town. Bizarrely, he felt excited about it for a second, especially about the possibility of pictures. What would it be like to be able to look back at a candid photograph of your first date? How many people could do that? What an unbelievably stupid thought about something that would obviously be horrible.

 

Then he remembered it was his turn to talk. “Good.”

“What made you think of it?”

“It seemed relevant to your interests.”

“I don’t really see how.”

Ed refrained from telling him how. “Just a hunch,” he said, instead.

 

It looked to Ed like the President knew exactly what Ed hadn’t said, because he arched an eyebrow in Ed’s direction. But it also looked like he was letting Ed get away with it. And that Ed was supposed to be aware that he was being allowed to get away with it. It was indulgent and threatening and kind of hot. He spread Ed another toast and his fingers touched Ed’s when he handed it to him and his eyes held Ed’s and Ed’s heart wobbled, strange and unanchored and thrilled. He ate the pâté. He sipped his drink. The waiter came back. Plates were exchanged.

 

“What would you have?” the President asked, once they’d rearranged things. He was concentrating on the lamb, slicing it up. Putting it on smaller plates.

“What?”

“You started to say something. ‘If I’d known more about strategy I’d have…’, you said, and then we got distracted. What would you have?”

“Oh. Nothing.”

“I’m interested.”

“It’s really nothing.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

 

Ed put his drink down. He put his fork down too. He had to do that because he needed to rest both hands on the table. He needed to be touching something solid, like grounding an electric current. He closed his eyes.

 

“I’m sorry, have I…” the President said.

“No, it’s okay.”

“It’s alright, Edward, it doesn’t matter. Forget I asked. Let’s talk about something else.”

 

It was too late by then. Because it did matter. “Darling?” the President said. He sounded so concerned and Ed forced himself to open his eyes again.

“I don’t know,” he said, taking a breath.

“It’s alright, I’m just being nosy.”

“No, you’re okay, I’m just… look I’m not… a strategist.”

“Alright?” the President asked him.

“I just don’t know if anybody should have gone in.”

 

The President didn’t give much indication of this, but Ed knew his body language well enough to know he’d surprised him. There was a microsecond pause before he started sectioning up lamb again. He didn’t look up. “To Afghanistan?”

 

“Sorry,” Ed said. “I told you I’m not a strategist. I don’t know what world crises you’re keeping straight with it. I probably wouldn’t understand if I did. But. Just… sorry. I told you.”

“You don’t need to apologize to me, it wasn’t my policy.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Afghanistan is an inherited mess,” the President said. “You can blame Ronald Reagan for it, really. It’s alright, darling, you can relax. For what it’s worth, I agree with you.”

 

That seemed facetious to Ed. And several thousand miles wide of the mark. “I just mean…” he said, but he’d gotten lost. What did he mean? He felt exhaustion tears stinging his eyes again. He looked away.

 

“Is that why you left?” the President asked him.

 

His voice was very soft, suddenly. Quiet and gentle. He’d recalibrated for Ed, which meant Ed’s face was obvious enough to warrant that. He wished it wasn’t. He swallowed. It hurt. “I don’t know.”

 

“What about Iraq?” the President said. “Do you have the same thing to say about that?”

“We were flying in and out of Iraq,” Ed said. “I was stationed in Bahrain. We spent most of the time on the base. A lot of missions but also a lot of down time. Some of the guys even trained for the Corps marathon. It even got boring.”

“I see.”

“Maybe if I’d been on the ground the whole time I’d see it the same way. But I wasn’t. When we did go in… it was for… they were rescue missions. Supplies. Kind of felt… useful.”

 

It was a mistake to let himself think about that, the certainty in knowing who a combatant was he’d had in Iraq and how circumstantial that looked to him now, after Korengal. Even the smallest step in that direction had made the Valley start to open under him and if he thought about that any more he wouldn’t be able to climb out of it.

 

He made himself feel the wood of the table. He made himself think about that instead. Smooth and hard and cold and definitely there. He didn’t look at the President, though he thought he could feel him watching him.

 

“But Afghanistan didn’t,” the President said.

“What?” Ed said.

“It didn’t feel useful.”

“I don’t know if that means anything.”

“You were deployed in the Korengal Valley, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And that, in particular, you think it was ill advised?”

“Maybe. Yes.”

“How so?”

 

He didn’t ask the question harshly. It didn’t even sound particularly probing. Just interested, wanting to know what Ed had to say. He slid a plate over to Ed and it had delicate pieces of meat on it and the color and the depth of clarity of it, and the _brightness_ , it was striking. Ed couldn’t stop staring at it.

 

The problem was that he didn’t know what to say. It was always like that with Korengal. His words would come up to the edge of the Valley and then stop there, every time, because there wasn’t any way to explain this. His memories of it were in senses and impressions, feelings and snapshot pictures, nothing coherent. They felt frozen in amber, preserved away from him, but sensitive like a bruise at the same time. He tried to think about his hands on the table again. It was difficult.

 

“Is it alright to talk about this?” the President said.

“Yes,” Ed said. “Why?”

“You’re very tense,” the President said. He hesitated, then he reached over the table and picked up Ed’s hand again. Ed saw every part of the movement but it shocked him anyway and he didn’t quite manage to stop himself from jumping. He saw the President notice it. Saw him react. “Are you alright, darling?”

 

“Just tired,” Ed said.

 

The President didn’t say anything right away. He moved his thumb over the back of Ed’s hand. He watched Ed’s face. Ed wished he had better command over it, but he knew he didn’t. There was nothing he could do about what he looked like right now, so he just kept his eyes on the table and tried to wait it out. He wanted to change the subject but he didn’t have the President’s skills at that kind of thing. He seemed destined instead to keep on revealing raw and intimate truths about things he didn’t even want to mention.

 

“Hopefully you’ll get a better sleep tonight,” the President said, after what seemed like a long time.

“You have weird taste in food,” Ed blurted.

 

It was wildly mistimed and the volume was poorly regulated and the President snorted. “What?”

“You eat… really weird stuff,” Ed said, desperately. “You don’t know what you’re doing with it, do you?”

“My god!” the President said. “Excuse me?”

“Who eats an omelet with potato salad?”

“It was fine!”

“Yeah, it was. It was basically fine. But it’s weird, my point is it’s weird.”

“Alright, well.”

 

“Is this what you want to eat?” Ed asked him, gesturing at the table. “If you could have anything you wanted, would you be eating foie gras and lamb and what is this, duck?”

“It’s nice enough.”

“But would you?”

“Probably.”

“Or do you just do what you think you should?”

 

The President stared at him. “You’re suggesting we have that in common.”

“No, I don’t care what I eat.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean doing what you think you should.”

“I don’t always.”

“No you don’t. And neither do I. I don’t like rules. I like survival, and I like success. Following rules doesn’t help either of those things. I’m not sure how pâté is relevant.”

“Because you worry,” Ed said. “You worry if you’re doing it right.”

“Yes, I’m not a sociopath, Edward,” the President snapped. “I’m aware of social niceties.”

 

Ed didn’t say anything to that. He knew he wasn’t about to get much further. There were things about the President, Ed knew, that you kind of had to accept if you were going to talk to him like this, and this was one of them: officially, he didn’t care what anyone thought of him. Officially, his desire for total control over everyone’s opinions wasn’t at all because he assumed that if left to their own devices they’d be cutting and negative, not even slightly. It was for some other reason, never specified, probably for the good of the nation or some other version of legacy.

 

Officially. The _truth_ , however, was that he did care, and that that was exactly why. But you weren’t allowed to tell him the truth, even if you both knew you knew it.

 

Across the table the President was eating crankily, like a bear prepping for hibernation, hunching its shoulders up and growling to be left alone. He moved like that all the time, Ed thought. Like a bear trying to work human objects with bear paws and hoping no-one would notice but Ed did and because he did there was no way on Earth he would ever be able to stop loving him. Nothing would stop him anticipating his expressions, folding himself around his movements, knowing this thing about him that nobody else knew. Nothing to do with duty or work anymore, or even anything even like it. Whatever happened now, he knew, it would devastate him. That knowledge rode forward with same kind of roaring blank of sensation waiting for him at the edge of the Valley, opening the same kind of impossible gulf behind it. Something was coming, and whatever it was, it would change him fundamentally from the bones out.

 

He grabbed tighter on the President’s hand. The President smiled at him, forgiving, apologetic, embarrassed, and Ed’s heart lurched up into his throat and thudded there because such a conversational smile seemed terrifying in light of what it sat on top of and what was still to come. He made himself smile back anyway.

 

If the goal was to grab something tangible to stop him from falling then this was it. The details in the President’s face and his white hair and his soft body and the impressive angular oddness structuring it all, they were so present to Ed and so solidly _there_ that for a second they made everything else fall instead. But that had to be an illusion. It had to be. His hand felt so real that paradoxically it couldn’t possibly be real at all.

 

“You talk to me when you’ve eaten a ketchup sandwich,” the President said. He appeared to have composed himself. He sipped his drink. It sounded so normal.

 

“I was a Marine,” Ed pointed out. “I ate rations.”

“Well then we’re probably even.”

“Did you ever eat roadkill? Or is that just a Dukes of Hazard type Southern stereotype”

“I never did, no,” the President said. But he said it in a way that Ed suspected meant yes.


	11. Chapter 11

 

In the time it took to finish dinner and get back to the room, Ed done from nervy and stunned to just plain nervy. He was messy in his stomach all the way through the polite and embarrassed conversation he’d had with Miller in the elevator, during which he determined some of the previous night’s events and the President graciously didn’t say anything. It didn’t really matter that much in the face of everything else anyway – if _only_ the worst moment of this whole adventure was having to be carried up to his room by people he used to be the boss of. It wasn’t going to be.

 

He wanted to make himself calm down, if only because it seemed illogical to fluctuate so wildly from dreamlike fantasyland to more searingly anxious than he remembered being in a good while, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it. He’d known as soon as he realized what the situation was that it was going to be hellish, and he wished he’d known sooner because he’d have been able to put it into plainer words, and they might not be here now, and he wouldn’t have to light the fuse he knew he had to.

 

He tried hard to keep it out of his face though, and he thought for once he might have actually succeeded in it, because the President didn’t seem to notice any of it. The President strode into the suite like he was used to being there and dropped his jacket over the arm of a chair and seemed happy, Ed thought, or content, or something like that. His world was in order and he was in charge of it, and he liked that.

 

Ed liked it too. He tried to fix a picture of that in his mind, of the President moving confidently over to the bar that for almost two whole days now had been their bar, making a drink for Ed along with his own, completely reflexively. He was singing under his breath while he did it. It was the sweetest thing in the world. And it was going to be, Ed was pretty sure, the last thing he ever saw in this version of what the world was like. He wanted to remember it. Because something was coming, and he didn’t want it to blank all of this out and take everything away.

 

His muscles tensed when the President brought a drink over to him, to where he was standing. Once he gave it to him, he used the free hand to wind around his waist. To pull him close and kiss him. Ed took a deep breath. He thought about how he smelled. How good it was.

 

“Well, Edward,” the President said. “Here we are.”

 

Ed took a fortifying sip. The President let him go so he could do that. He watched him fondly, but then his expression changed. Curious. Maybe even suspicious. “How about that,” he said. “An entire day together. Just you and me.”

 

Ed braced himself. “I slept through most of it.”

“Yes, dear,” the President said.

“And that fight.”

“That too.”

“And…”

“Darling,” the President said, “stop.”

 

Ed wasn’t going to stop. He stepped out of the President’s arms. He put his drink down on the surface closest to him and folded his arms. He looked the President right in the face. “Are you disappointed?”

“My god, in what?”

“In what I’m really like.”

“I knew what you’re really like. That’s why I… it’s why everything. Why are you…”

“No, you didn’t.”

 

Something flashed across the President’s face. Ed expected him to start to get angry. He’d expected that anger was how it would start. But he didn’t get angry. He sighed. It was deep, right up from the bottom of his chest. He looked Ed over, looked him up and down, then met his eyes and stared right into them. He didn’t say a single word. He just stared. He stared long enough for it to get uncomfortable.

 

Ed let him, and he did it until he turned and walked away. Over to the windows.

From where he was standing, Ed could almost see what the President was looking at: the brightly lit square of the White House lawn, and the House itself shining against the darkness. Ed watched him take a drink, watched him thinking. He wondered which part of things he was thinking about. The practicalities of moving Ed’s possessions back to his apartment? Admitting he’d been wrong about this? For a second the regret of not letting them have one last nice night together hurt so much it overwhelmed him, but Ed knew he couldn’t kid himself. He couldn’t have done that even if he’d wanted to. In terms of what he was really like, he was absolutely the kind of person who had to know.

 

While he was thinking that, the President spoke. “You mean I’m not used to you answering back.”

 

That was a surprise. “If you want to put it like that, then yeah.”

“You mean you assume what I wanted from you was servile acquiescence and nothing in the way of your own opinions.”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean,” Ed said. “Did you think it would be different?”

 

“I don’t know what I thought,” the President said. “I didn’t have any idea. But I will tell you this: my opinion of you, and what I want with you, it was correct, it hasn’t changed.”

“Hasn’t it?”

“In an ideal world, no, I wouldn’t have jumped straight to asking you to follow me into exile, no, but the circumstances are what they are, and it is what I want.”

“I don’t understand. Do you mean you need time? It’s okay if you do. It’s important. That’s why I’m asking.”

The President sighed again. He seemed so old, suddenly. So tired. He never usually seemed old. It was disorienting. Ed wanted to pick up his drink, but he couldn’t do that somehow. He couldn’t move at all, except to look down at the floor and stare at it. Besides that, all he could do was stand there with his heart lurching sadly in this strange hotel room.

 

“It’s not your fault that you’re asking this,” the President said, “it’s mine. I’ve rushed you by necessity, the world has rushed us by necessity, because of our respective positions but also because of my… well because I haven’t…”

 

Ed waited. The President turned back to him. Ed saw the movement out of the corner of his eye and he looked up. He figured that whatever he was about to hear, they should at least be looking at each other.

 

“I love you, Edward,” the President said.

 

“Oh,” Ed said.

 

“I didn’t know it would be real either,” the President said. “I didn’t… I suppose I didn’t know that you would answer back. But you did. And it’s… it means so much to me. You’re real, you’re really here. You’re more than I could have ever hoped.”

 

“Oh,” Ed said, again.

 

“I do plan to court you, by the way. To fill in the things I would have done. In an ideal world. That’s what I meant by that, that ideally I wouldn’t have pushed things like this.”

 

“Court me,” Ed repeated. He wondered if the President knew how anachronistic words like that were, how deliberate that was. How much of it was just natural to him now.

“Do you understand?”

 

“I… uh,” Ed said, stupidly. His ears were ringing again but not in a way that made sense to him. His stomach was hot. That thing wound up in him had snapped open without him noticing it and now it was spilled everywhere and had gummed up the world. “Uh,” he said again.

 

“Are you alright?” the President asked him.

“Yes.”

“Will you let me kiss you?”

 

The earnest propriety of that made him laugh. “Yes,” he said, since apparently ‘yes’ was the only word he knew now and that made him laugh, and the President came over, and he put his drink down, and he took Ed’s face in his hands and did.

 

Ed couldn’t make himself stop laughing to kiss back. It made the President laugh too, a little bit, quietly. “There,” he said, stroking his hair behind his ear. “That’s better. At least you’re smiling.”

“I, uh,” Ed said, “I just.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know! I don't know what to say!”

“You don’t have to know what to _say_ ,” the President said. “You’re moving to Maine.”

“You know I… you know I…”

“Shh, shh. Don’t worry,” the President said, petting him, stroking his face.

 

“It’s just I…” Ed said. He could hear himself sounding panicked, slipping straight from hysterical laughter into actual hysteria. “I…” he struggled to say. “I just… I thought… I…”

 

The President had started to look concerned. “Come here, come here,” he said, putting his arms around Ed. Ed took a jagged breath and felt his eyes prick.

 

He wasn’t crying though. He felt on the verge of it, but he wasn’t. His lips trembled, but that wasn’t why. It was something else that made him do that. Something hot and staticky and urgent. He pressed himself into the President’s body and felt himself being hugged and stroked and it felt so overwhelmingly and impossibly present again that he could barely breathe. His stomach leapt and his hands had wound around to where they were resting on the President’s ass and that felt so good to him. Overwhelming.

 

He didn’t know what to do about it except move. He looked up into the President’s eyes and he kissed him, hard. He pushed his whole body against him and kissed him hard enough to push them back towards the sofa. They stumbled. When Ed moved his mouth away the President looked surprised, stunned, a little bit amused, but Ed didn’t respond to that or stop, he just caught his breath and went right back to kissing. He could feel himself already hard against the President’s hip. He hugged and grabbed hard until he felt the President pawing him in response.

 

I want to stake a claim on you, he thought. I want to make a claim on your body and for you to make a claim on mine. That seemed like a strange thing to think it in those words when it was such an extreme, an impression, but there it was in his head anyway. He couldn’t say it aloud, but he couldn’t make sense of it either and it drove him forward. He pushed against the President again, pushed them down onto the sofa itself. He straddled him. He cupped his face. He kept kissing. He wiggled himself until the President was grabbing his ass. He put his hand around the President’s junk through his pants. He squeezed at it. The President inhaled sharply. “What are you doing?”

“Just let me… just let me sit on your dick.”

 

The President’s eyes shot wide open. He grinned. “Well, if it will make you happy, by all means go ahead.”

 

Ed knew the President was being funny, was teasing him to try to make it alright. And it wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate that, it was just that the confession burned in him too hotly for teasing, and he blurted the rest of it out with a seriousness he couldn’t correct for. “I just,” he said. “I want you to hold me, and I want to look at you and I want to touch you, and I want you come inside me, and I want… I just want that.”

 

He had to look away. His cheeks burned too. He didn’t know why he had to say that aloud. Stupid of him. But the President reached out and guided his face down and kissed him. “Well then of course you shall have it, sugarplum,” he said. “If only all life’s wishes were so easily granted.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Please, please don’t be,” the President said, stroking his cheek. “Please don’t be.”

“I want you to. I want you to come inside me. I want it.”

“I will, sweetpea.”

“Yeah?”

“If you’re going to keep moving like that you’d better get to it.”

“I need something.”

“There’s some in the bathroom.”

“Where?”

“It’s in my bag,” the President said. “Get it. Bring a towel.”

 

Ed slid off the President’s lap, obediently, and the President lay down against the sofa and put a hand over his face. Ed worried about that for a second but then it seemed obvious that he was panting, catching his breath. That he hadn’t been overstating things when he’d told Ed to hurry up. Ed would have hurried anyway, grabbing lube from the President’s cabin bag, which, when he took it out, he realized was his own, from his own recently named ‘sex drawer’. How clever of the President, he thought, how sweet. It hadn’t occurred to him to plan for this, but it had occurred to the President and that felt good to him. He took a towel too and brought it out.

 

The President watched him while he stripped off his clothes. “Are you going to be alright, with the OxyContin before?”

“It’s fine,” Ed said.

“Is it?”

“Definitely. Don’t worry. Stop talking. Undo your pants.”

“Shall I…”

“No, stay there. Just get it out.”

 

His firm voice seemed to delight the President because he did that with evident pleasure, grinning at Ed the entire time. He unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants and shimmied them, along with his shorts, down over his hips. He didn’t take them off, just pulled them down enough that his dick was out. He gripped the base of it while Ed leaned over and pulled them down further. He pulled his sweater and shirt up. He grabbed the President’s thigh, soft and hairy. He stroked there. Slid his hand between his thighs, meeting resistance. Fondled his dick. Cupped his balls. Withdrew his hand to squeeze lube into it. The President breathed in deeply and watched him.

 

He wondered how much he was revealing about himself through the swift proficiency with which he warmed himself up. The rules were changing, all of them, because this was something the President would normally do, had done in the past, would tell him to do and then watch and dictate the performance of. But he wanted the President to see exactly what he was taking possession of. He wanted to answer back with his body the same way he’d done it with his speech. He wanted to show the President that he was here; he knew how to get himself fucked, he knew how to go forth in the world and get it. He hadn’t taken it from the President like this before because that hadn’t been the arrangement, but he could.

 

It seemed like the President did see what was going on. He looked at Ed as if he were spellbound. His hands moved on Ed’s body reverently and Ed straddled him and oiled and fingered himself until he felt he could take it, and then he gripped the President’s dick and lowered himself onto it, all the way down in one move.

 

It was shocking. Moving that fast and that deliberately, and dropping down like that, it was a stunning, bright, full feeling, and it was exactly what he’d anticipated. He closed his eyes to catch his breath and the President grunted. He gripped Ed’s hips. Ed rocked against him.

 

Ed never knew how to say this, and he also didn’t know if it was something he ever should say, but there was something about the President’s body, his stockiness, his thickness, his substantial physical presence, that resonated so perfectly with everything else about him. It did something to Ed, in his heart and in his stomach, a warm impossible thing he didn’t know how to articulate. The President was stubborn and determined and fearless and it made sense to Ed that his body would be as solid and resolute as his mind. It looked good. It felt good. It made good, comforting sense and it made Ed fluttery and hard to look at and to press against. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to tell him that.

 

Sitting on his dick like this, though, he felt it intensely. The President’s hands felt strong and big and he’d been feeling them for days, hugging him, stroking him, rubbing his back, grabbing him while they fucked. Now he felt them on his hips, as the President pulled him down onto him. He felt the soft, heavy pressure of the President’s belly against his thighs and junk, felt his broad, sweatered chest pliant under his own hand, and it felt good. It felt strong and correct and reassuring and good. He leaned in and kissed the President’s mouth. He felt him kiss back. He spoke low. “You’re gonna come inside me.”

 

It seemed to hit the right note. “Oh god. My god, darling.”

“You’re gonna,” Ed said.

“Am I just?”

“You’re gonna fucking do it.”

“Oh.”

“You’re gonna fucking come inside me.”

“The mouth…” the President said, “the mouth on you, boy.”

“You’re getting close to it already, I can feel it. I can feel it in me already and I just fucking got on.”

“I’m… oh, Jesus.”

 

Ed ground his ass down as hard as he could. The strangled groan that came out of the President made his own junk leap and throb so hard he had to count to ten before moving again. Then he ground down again, and he kept doing it until the groans were interspersed with tiny, almost inaudible whimpers. He didn’t know he’d been waiting for that sound until he heard it, because he’d never in his life heard the President make it before.

 

As he made it, he gripped Ed’s hips even harder, pulled him down firmly, holding him there like it ached to do so. His own body was moving too, and Ed pushed against him. “Oh darling,” the President said, murmured really. His eyes were closed. “Oh darling.”

“Come inside me,” Ed said. “Fucking do it.”

“It’s so soon darling, I can…”

“Fucking _do it_ ,” Ed said.

 

The President whimpered again, and Ed ground again, and the President gasped, and the he did what he was told. He came, and Ed saw it in his face before he felt it in his ass, and he grabbed his own dick and jerked it in order to take full advantage of the situation. It took nothing at all. It shot through him in an instant and he came on his knuckles and all over the exposed curve of the President’s belly. That felt shockingly bold when he realized he’d done it, but at the same time he meant it. That was exactly the claim he’d intended to make.

 

The President pawed and fondled him, breathing hard. His face and the small v of chest he could see at the neck of his open shirt were pink from exertion. Ed slid off him and moved until he was laying against his chest, getting his own come on his body, feeling the President’s in his ass, not caring. The President’s arms came all the way around him, pressing him close. “Jesus fucking Christ, Edward,” he said. “This… this demanding behavior…”

 

Ed flushed. He felt hot and throbbing and lit up inside but he also remembered every part of what he’d said and done and now it seemed shameful and ridiculous. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, it’s too much, I’m sorry.”

“Oh god no, oh god, darling, god, it’s so… god. It’s fantastic. Christ. You can do that to me any time you like.”

 

“You’d need breaks,” Ed said, stupidly, before he even realized it was funny. Then he didn’t care. The President laughed and Ed looked up at him and he looked so happy, Ed thought. Not happy with conditions, or amused with reservations, or any guarded, usual President expression, just happy. Just kind of goofy and silly and smiling. He picked up Ed’s hand and kissed Ed’s fingertips, then held his hand tight against his shoulder. He lay his head back down on the sofa and held Ed against him. “Christ. God. Marvelous.”

 

“Good,” Ed said.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing. Just. Okay. Good.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s really, really not.”

“You’re exceptional, do you know that?”

“I’m nothing special.”

“You’re a fucking idiot,” the President said. “You’re remarkable. ‘Nothing special’ my ass.”

 

Ed snorted and wriggled up. He kissed the President, sat up and toweled them off. He leaned over for the President’s cigarettes, lit one and gave it to him. “Want your drink?”

“Yes, I do,” the President said. “But don’t put clothes on.”

“What?” Ed said.

“Just let me watch you walk around naked. Just let me do that. You’re a goddamned Greek sculpture and it’s an absolute pleasure.”

 

Ed didn’t know if he should smirk or blush in response to that. He didn’t do either in the end, he just got the drink, and picked his own up too. The President pulled his own pants up with the cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. He looked like a gangster. Ed loved it.

 

And being naked in front of these huge windows felt daring too, vulnerable but in a good way. He didn’t think there was any way anybody could see in, but seeing out was thrilling just the same. When he brought the drink over the President pulled him onto his lap. “God,” he said, pushing Ed’s hair back, tracing the line of his body, squeezing him around the waist. “God. I’m so glad you’re coming with me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

 

“I’m glad you’re telling me,” Ed said. He pressed his cheek against the President’s hair. He closed his eyes.

“I’m going to keep telling you.”

The President wouldn’t let him get dressed when they got into bed to watch _Game of Thrones_ , but he did concede to getting undressed himself. He sounded like he thought it was stupid, but he accepted the deal and he did it and slipped into bed. He watched Ed open up his laptop, waiting patiently until he put it back down on the bed. The second that was done he pulled Ed down under the covers and against his body and rolled him over and spooned him. His skin felt as soft and warm and as Ed he had anticipated. And the hotel linens were crisp and they smelled so clean and he wondered how something could seem so decadent and exciting when he felt so tired and safe.

 

“Can you see?” he asked.

“I can see,” the President told him. He heard him breathing deeply and he thought, maybe, he was appreciating the way Ed smelled. Ed put the show to fullscreen and wriggled his ass further into the crook of the President’s body.

 

“That’s so nice, darling,” the President said. “You feel so good.”

“So do you,” Ed said.

“Thank you.”

“You do,” Ed said. “You really do. I’ve never… nothing’s ever felt this nice.”

“I’m sure it has.”

“It hasn’t,” Ed said. “I’ve never… it hasn’t.”

The President didn’t answer that. He just grunted and ran his hands over Ed’s body. Appreciatively kissed his neck, his shoulders. Ed knew he was swooning from it but he also didn’t care. Nothing could happen that hadn’t already. He set the episode playing then leaned into it.

 

So what if he wasn’t paying attention, they’d watch it again. They could watch the whole season again tomorrow if they wanted to. These kisses were happening now and they were soft and perfect and good. He felt the President getting hard again and he pushed his ass against it. The President’s arms tightened. After a little while, he traced his hand over Ed’s stomach and cupped it around his junk. “Have you got another one in you, sweetpea?” he asked.

 

Ed nodded. “Not… energetic, but yeah. Yeah.”

“That’s what I thought. Here, let’s just…”

 

He closed his hand and started jerking Ed slowly. At the same time, he pushed his hard-on into the flesh of Ed’s ass. He didn’t put it inside him, just rubbed against him, gripping and stroking him off with ease and precision. Ed pressed and ground against him. He didn’t move much, or fast, neither of them did, just enough, and rhythmically, and it felt sleepy and easy and comfortable.

 

He came blissfully, panting, filling with sweetness that throbbed all the way through him and spilled onto the sheets. The President pushed against him and cuddled him tight and grunted into his ear and Ed felt him come too, hot onto his ass. After a minute, Ed felt him toweling it off him. He accepted that. He didn’t turn around until he did it to be kissed. “There’s come on the sheets,” he said. “I just rolled in it.”

 

The President laughed. He put a hand over his eyes. “Put a towel on it.”

“They were clean.”

“Well, now they’re not. Have this towel.”

“No, it’s got come on it too.”

“So fussy all of a sudden.”

“It’s not all of a sudden, I just don’t want to be covered in come.”

“Don’t you?”

 

“Shut up,” Ed said, laughing too.

“I’m just pointing out that you’ve changed your tune.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up,” the President said, pulling Ed on top of him. He kissed his face. He ran his fingers through his hair.

 

Ed propped himself up on the President’s chest. “Can I get you something while I’m up?”

“A drink and cigarettes and my phone.”

“Okay,” Ed said, rolling off him. He pulled the sheet up over him after he did and tucked it around him, because he looked cute tucked in like that.

 

“The room service menu,” the President said.

“You hungry?”

“A bit.”

“Used too much energy, huh?” Ed said, smirking. “I’m gonna put my shorts on.”

“If you must.”

 

He couldn’t actually remember where his shorts were. Next to the sofa, probably. He got a new pair out of his case instead. He didn’t bother finding them or fixing anything up in the main room, just got the drinks, the menu, the rest of the stuff. His body felt easy now, loose. The tiredness he felt was soothing and warm rather than nervy or distressing. When he slid under the covers again after delicately laying a clean towel over the wet patch, he wound his arm around the President’s waist and leaned against his chest and it was the most comfortable place in the world.

 

The President lit a cigarette. He really probably wasn’t allowed to do that, but Ed figured if you could afford to stay here, you could probably afford to pay the cleaning fine. The hand that wasn’t holding a cigarette and the menu was in Ed’s hair, fondling absently. “Oh, I need my glasses,” he said, after a second or two. “I can’t read this.”

“You should have said.”

“Well, I didn’t say.”

“I’ll get them.”

“No, it’s alright,” the President said, reaching his arm out. “If I just… hold it here…”

“I could read it to you?”

“No, that’s a terrible precedent. Besides I can see it now.”

“What are you getting?”

“Some kind of stupid dessert. Because you’re right.”

 

“About what?” Ed said. He kept getting distracted by how soft the hair on the President’s chest was.

“It doesn’t matter. All of it. Just take your victory.”

“If you want to get a stupid dessert, get a stupid dessert.”

“You think it’s silly.”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Ed said. He leaned up a little so he could sip his drink.

“You want one?”

“Yeah, let me look.”

 

He felt the President transferring the menu to his other hand so he could hand it to Ed and take a drag. “You need to put that episode back to the start. I wasn’t concentrating.”

“Neither was I.”

“Well, I suppose neither of us can multitask.”

“I can,” Ed said. “I just don’t want to. I need my whole ass for this.”

 

The President laughed. Coughed a little bit too. “This is just ridiculous. I’m going to have to start exercising.”

“Why?”

“To keep up with you.”

“It is exercise,” Ed said. He pulled the room phone over so the President could order for them.

 

The President snorted. Then he dialed the phone.


	12. Chapter 12

 

By the time they were actually eating, just a short way into starting the episode again, Ed suspected the President was more serious about the stupid dessert situation than he’d let on. He confirmed this when he leaned over for a bite and the President rapped him across the back of his hand with his spoon.

 

“Ow holy shit!” Ed exclaimed, but the President did not look sorry. Or amused. “Eat your own.”

“It’s like trying to take food from a dog!”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

“I said it’s like trying to take food from a dog.”

 

“How about,” the President said, momentarily holding his spoon out at Ed like a professor’s pointer before diving back in, “you shut the fuck up and stop trying to take my food.”

 

Ed couldn’t stop laughing.

 

“You may have a _tiny_ taste,” the President said.

“That’s okay.”

“This probably wasn’t the most health conscious choice I could have made anyway. It’s sensible to share.”

“You’re right, I have my own.”

“Still.”

“Who cares?”

“Well, you don’t, but you don’t need to.”

 

“Neither do you,” Ed said.

 

The President looked at him and started to finish eating. “Neither was drinking this much,” he said.

“What?”

“Me, I mean. Today. Or generally. In terms of health conscious choices.”

“Why are you so worried about that?” Ed asked him.

“Because I’m twenty years older than you,” the President said. “So I’m thinking about it.” He put his empty dish down and Ed moved their trays onto the floor.

 

“About that,” Ed said. “ _Can_ you drink? I mean, I know you _do_ , but… I guess I figured you knew what you were doing. I mean, I can’t technically take opiates, and I did. But are you saying you want me to… uh, say something?”

“I didn’t know you couldn’t take opiates.”

“It’s just not great for my, you know, this whole area in the middle here,” Ed said, gesturing at himself. “It won’t kill me, it just sorta sucks.”

“If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have given it to you.”

“Yeah well I knew that and I made an informed decision, so just, you know, answer the question.”

 

The President made a face at him. It was a face Ed was getting to recognize, and maybe even to like. It meant Ed was pushing his luck and being allowed to do it.

 

“Technically,” the President said, “as it was explained to me, there’s not much functional difference between this liver and the one I was born with, except for the fact that I have to perform a ritual daily obliteration of my immune system to make it stay in there. It’s more the principle of the thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that fucking it up would be a little on the nose, don’t you think? ‘Thank you for your dead son’s liver, Mrs. Williams, it has cirrhosis now’.”

 

Ed snorted. He shuffled himself back down until his head was on the President’s chest again. “I guess so.”

“So to answer your question, no, but I should drink a lot less, probably.”

“Sure.”

“And stop smoking.”

“I mean…”

“Maybe in Maine we could become organic vegans or something.”

 

Ed just turned his head up and looked at him. Apparently he didn’t even have to say what he was thinking, because “I’m definitely kidding,” the President said. “Well, at least I think I am.”

“Okay,” Ed said.

“No, darling, you need your meat.”

“Okay.”

“That was entendre.”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“Well, anyway. I don’t usually complain about things I can do something about.”

 

“Yeah, you’re talking too much,” Ed said, smiling against his skin, pressing his nose into it.

“Excuse me?”

 

Ed had started trailing his hand over the President’s body, just a little bit, from where he could reach. He felt his way down his side. He squeezed his hip. “Now that you’re not operating at a calorie deficit. Break time’s over.”

 

He heard the President laughing through his nose, felt it in his chest against his cheek. “Come up here, boy,” he said, and Ed reached his drink up onto the bedside table and slid up his body like a snake.

 

The President grabbed his ass and kissed him. Messy and cold. Sweet to taste. It was almost immediately urgent and Ed kissed right on back. He felt like he was hard again already which seemed impossible considering, but then he realized he absolutely was and that they might even possibly fuck _again_ because apparently there was no limit to it. He thought maybe he could get the President to throw him onto his back. He thrust a hand down under the sheets, feeling around on the President’s thigh. He pushed against him.

 

Then Ed’s phone rang. Ed froze. “Don’t!” the President said, and Ed tried to ignore it and keep kissing but kept ringing. And kept ringing. Past the point where it should have gone to voicemail, which meant his voicemail was full and then he could neither ignore his phone or ignore the fact that he’d been ignoring his phone. He rolled off the President to grab it.

 

“Tell them to go fuck themselves,” the President growled. “Come back here.”

 

“I’ve got to… I’m worried it’s…” Ed looked, but it wasn’t his mother. The number was unlisted. “The detail.”

“Why would they call you?”

“I don’t know what I said last night,” Ed said. “I might have commissioned an investigation. I was fucking drunk.”

 

As if he was trying to underscore the point, he groped around for his drink with his other hand. His throat felt dry. The President handed it to him and he hit answer. “Hello?”

 

It wasn’t the detail. It was the actual President, the former Vice President, the former First Lady, calling Ed from across the road on his personal phone. It took Ed a second to catch his breath.

 

“Hello, Edward,” the actual President said. “I’m told you’ve resigned.”

 

Her voice was so perfect, Ed thought. So measured and sculptured, like a glass figurine. He hoped he didn’t sound as stupidly frozen as he felt. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “Should I be sorry, or is that selfish of me? I hope it’s for greener pastures.”

“Uh, yes ma’am, I think so.”

“Will you be going with Francis?”

 

Ed coughed. And when he coughed the sip of drink he’d taken went down his windpipe and he spluttered. She waited for him to stop. “Is he with you?” she asked, when he had.

 

Ed didn’t think it was appropriate to say ‘yeah we’re fucking and watching _Game of Thrones_ ’ so he just coughed again.

 

“Don’t worry, Edward,” she said. “I’m glad he is.”

“Okay,” Ed said. “Well. Yes.”

 

“May I ask you how he is?” she asked. Ed thought he heard her laughing, quietly. Then he couldn’t tell if he’d heard an actual laugh or if the timbre of her speaking had changed just enough to imply that she might laugh. As if she was made of gentle impressions. It felt familiar.

 

“Alright, I think,” he said.

“May I ask you how you are?”

“Good, ma’am, thank you. How are… how are you?”

“Edward, I want you to know that nothing that happens in the course of your resignation, including any depositions you might be required to undergo, will be of any professional damage to you.”

 

Ed could tell the President was straining to listen, however much he pretended he wasn’t. It was sweet, in a way, his casually pretending to look at his own phone while actually paying a lot of attention to Ed’s. Sweet because it was so obvious, not at all covert or clever. Ed smiled at him and he pretended not to notice. “You don’t have to do that, ma’am,” he said, to the actual President, on the phone.

“I want to, Edward. You deserve a record that reflects the quality of your work. You’ve been very… vital to us. Myself as well as Francis.”

“Well,” Ed said. “Thank you, ma’am.”

 

There was a pause. Ed didn’t know if he was allowed to direct the conversation anywhere or what he would say if he did, so he just waited. The silence was absolute until she spoke again. “I hate to ask you this, Edward. It feels invasive. I promise you I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need to.”

“You can ask me anything you like, ma’am,” Ed said. He meant it. The President looked up, apparently unable to hide his attention now.

 

“Is he serious?” the actual President asked him. “Is he prepared to leave Washington?”

 

Ed felt weird answering that question when it felt so unreal to him still, weird talking about the President in the third person when he was sitting right there. But he did. “Yes,” he said, looking over at him. “Yes it is. We’re going soon. When we can. As soon as we can.”

“It will be safer for him, you understand that, don’t you? It will be safer for him if he leaves.”

“I do understand that, ma’am, yes.”

“Good.”

“Do you want to talk to him?”

“No thank you.”

 

The President made a face overhearing that. Ed put his hand on his arm. He stroked there. “Is he going to be… will you…”

“What I’ve done concerning Francis is done,” she said. It was firm. “I want to thank you for your service to me, and to your country, and to tell you that you have my assurances that you’ll be safe, wherever you’re going. That’s all I want to say tonight.”

“Yes, ma’am. Sorry.”

“Where _are_ you going?”

“Maine,” Ed said. “Rockland.”

 

That gentle laugh-like inflection again. He got it. Something about the fact that it was Maine made it funnier, added to the absurdity of the whole situation. He thought that too, and he was going. “Good luck,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“Please do leave a message for me if there’s anything you need. There may be… delay, but I mean what I’ve said to you, sincerely.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate it.”

“Don’t. It’s the least I can do for you.”

“Well, no, it’s…”

The actual President didn’t wait for him to finish. “Goodnight Edward,” she said, and then she was gone.

 

“Well,” the former President President said. He cleared his throat. Ed tried to make a sympathetic face at him.

 

“That’s reassuring for you,” the President said. “A bit. Is it?”

“I guess it is.”

“I keep forgetting about the coming shitstorm. There’s no FEMA equivalent for this, just our own preparedness. We’ve got to be ready. We need to plan. And I keep forgetting.”

“Me too,” Ed said. “It’s stupid.”

 

“Yes it is,” the President said. “But I can’t concentrate on it anymore than I can concentrate on this episode. Which we’re going to have to start a third time, by the way. Because of your whole ass.”

 

Ed laughed, but it made sense to him. How on Earth could he think about anything outside the room when this was what was happening in it?

 

“It’s going to be very hard,” the President said. “Your work depositions notwithstanding. The press. Claire and I are trying to work out an agreement via a series of lawyers, which, well, I won’t bore you, but there will be... I’m trying to pretend it won’t be hard, but it will, Edward.”

“I can take it.”

“I know you _can_. I just wish you didn’t have to.”

“But I can,” Ed said.

 

The President made a face but he didn’t argue. “Tomorrow we should talk about who you need to contact and what you can safely tell them. And what kind of protections they can be offered.”

“Yeah,” Ed said. “We can do that tomorrow.”

 

The President had started stroking his arm. “Would you rather do that tonight?”

“No,” Ed said.

“What do you want to do tonight?”

“Stay in bed and watch _Game of Thrones_.”

“Well thank god we’re agreed.”

 

Ed smiled. “Did you take your pills?”

“You’re spoiling the mood.”

“Well did you?”

The President rolled his eyes. “I’ll take them now.”

“You need a glass of water?”

“That would be very nice, thank you.”

 

Ed got it for him. He sat on the edge of the bed, watching. “Do you take anything,” the President asked, handing the glass back to Ed. “I haven’t seen you take anything.”

“Just vitamins. I mostly get shots.”

“How wholesome.”

“Sure,” Ed said. He didn’t really want to talk about vitamin shots. He kissed the President’s cheek, took the glass back into the bathroom, then decided he’d brush his teeth. With the door open, he could still hear the President talking. “It’s funny,” he said. “I was married for nearly thirty years. You forget this, what learning a new domesticity is like. It’s novel.”

 

Ed’s mouth was full of toothpaste so he didn’t say anything.

 

“You have a head start,” the President was saying. “You know all these things about me but I don’t even know about your vitamin shots.”

“Well, now you do,” Ed said, spitting some toothpaste out. “Once a month, vitamin shots.”

“I guess it’s not really domesticity. Not in a hotel.”

“It’s domestic enough.”

“Yes, I suppose. I just think about what it will be like when the space is a little more… personal with you.”

“You know there’s no rush, right?” Ed said.

 

Things went silent. They went oddly silent. It felt abrupt. He finished up and came back out into the room, and when he did, the President wasn’t looking at him. “Did I say something?” he asked.

“No, no.”

“You seem, uh…”

 

The President looked up at him, sharp, and Ed realized that he’d accidentally lanced something he hadn’t meant to.

 

“I’m not criticizing you,” Ed said.

“I don’t care if you were.”

“Well, I’m not. I get it, I think. This all feels… it must be a kind of limbo for you, I get that. I know you want to be sure of things.”

 

The President didn’t say anything. He looked away. Ed crawled onto the bed and kneeled next to him. “Hey,” he said. “So?”

“I don’t just throw this around,” the President snapped back at him. “I don’t just tell people I love them arbitrarily. I’m not some sort of… middle-aged Sansa Stark. If I said it, I meant it, and I don’t see any point dicking around.”

 

Ed smiled. “I know. It wasn’t a criticism.”

“Well, it sounded like one.”

“Thought you didn’t care.”

“I don’t.”

 

Ed put out his hand and laid it against the President’s cheek. He felt his shock and his weird reflexive tensing up and let it pass, then stroked his hair back at the temple. Ran his fingers through it. The President let him do that. Like petting a bear.

 

“It’s weird you said that about Sansa,” Ed said, still stroking.

“What? Why? I thought you liked it when we made references to that. It’s our thing now, almost. I thought.”

“I do, it’s just… it’s funny, in particular.”

“Why?”

“Because sometimes I used to think I was like that. About you.”

“How?”

“Foolishly attached. In a way that wouldn’t end well for me.”

 

The President’s eyes were full of something Ed found hard to pin down. They seemed larger somehow. Softer. They flicked down. He put his hand on Ed’s arm. “Poor Sansa.”

“Yeah,” Ed said.

“You’re not foolish.”

“Neither are you.”

 

The President looked up at him again now. He was making a face Ed recognized, pulling his bottom lip up, thinking about things, sternly. Rolling things over in his mind. Then, suddenly, quickly, he moved his head. He put it against Ed’s chest, near his shoulder.

 

It gave Ed a shock. After a second’s hesitation, he put his arms around him and he felt him accept it. It lasted for less than a minute and for every single second of it Ed held him like a butterfly with especially breakable wings.

 

Then, the President moved his head away, and settled back against his pillows. “Are you getting in?” he said, in his usual tone, because apparently things were back to normal now.

“Yeah.”

“Want to watch some more?”

“Okay.”

“Has anyone ever called you Ned?”

“No. And no thank you.”

“It’s not going to keep you up?” the President asked. “If you like we can just try to go to sleep.”

 

Ed was still working his way through the hot shock of the President’s tiny snuggle so it took him a minute to move, but he did, getting back under the covers and hooking the laptop over to him. “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to sleep anyway.”

“Because it’s an unfamiliar place? Because you slept in the day?”

 

“Because I don’t,” Ed said. “At the best of times I don’t really sleep very much. And there’s been… a lot of events.”

“Why don’t you just lie here for a little bit and watch television and we’ll see if you can.”

“Sure, okay. Unless it gets sexy.”

“You should rest, darling.”

 

The way that was phrased was strange to Ed. It sounded cautious, like he, Ed, was fragile. “You’re worried about me,” he said.

“Yes,” the President said. “A little bit. I’m not sure if I should be, I’m not sure if I’m over-projecting, or over-occupying myself, but yes, I am.”

“What am I doing that’s so worrying?”

“I’m not sure, really. Maybe nothing. Perhaps it’s just… free-floating worry. It’s a stressful time in some ways.”

“Uh huh, it is.”

“But then it’s also so…”

“Yeah.”

“It’s nothing. I’m just…”

“I’m okay,” Ed said. He set the show up again. “I promise I’m okay.”

 

“Do you remember when I called you on the phone while you were away?” the President said.

“What?”

“When you were in New Haven, after you’d been… after your injury. And I called you.”

 

“Yeah, I remember,” Ed said. He struggled to pull it up. “I remember that you called and some of the… But not… uh. I don’t really remember a lot of details.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“No. It’s probably because while we were speaking your mother brought your painkillers in, or whatever it was you were taking, and you got absolutely out of your mind on them in a matter of minutes.”

 

Ed snorted. “Oh shit. Yeah. Sorry.”

“No, no. No, it’s nothing to be sorry for, not at all, I was just thinking about it. You told me you thought I was warm like a bear, and that you wanted me to grab your ass, and some… really quite graphic surgical details about exactly how much you had left in the way of intestines.”

“Jesus, really? God. Gross.”

“It was very gross, yes, but it was also… you got quite fixated. It was…”

“I’m really sorry. Nobody… nobody needs to hear about that.”

“Do you know what you kept saying? You kept muttering to yourself, ‘I’ve still got most of ‘em’.”

 

The President did an impression of the muttering when he said it. Ed laughed, even though most of that laughter was extreme embarrassment. “ _Gross_. I’m really sorry.”

“ ‘They took a lot of ‘em out but there’s a lot still in there’.”

“God.”

“ ‘Took the whole lot out and stuffed ‘em back in there. Not all of ‘em. But most. Still got most of ‘em’.”

“ _Gross._ ”

“You really wanted me to know that.”

“I’m so sorry.”

 

The President wrapped his arm around him. “How much did they actually take out, all together? You were explicit about the process, but not about the results.”

“About a foot. A little over.”

“I suppose that’s not that much… intestinal matter? in the scheme of things.”

“Nah there’s about 22 feet of it or something, usually.”

“And you’ve still got most of ‘em.”

“Shut up!” Ed said.

 

The President smiled. “It was just… quite a surprising thing,” he said. “How much I wanted to… I don’t know. I don’t know what I wanted. It took me a long time to call. I almost didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know why not. I don’t deal well with… vulnerability. I don’t know.”

 

That had the ring of profound truth to it, Ed thought. But he didn’t push. “Why did you then?”

 

The President didn’t answer. He stroked Ed’s back again. It was becoming reflexive, Ed realized. This pose and these actions. The President lying on his back and Ed rolled on his side pressed up against him, one arm over his chest, and the President’s arms around him all the way, stroking his back. It was becoming almost automatically calming, like from the first touch he felt himself start to wind down. And they’d got into the pose for this without Ed even noticing.

 

“I, uh. I really like what you’re doing,” Ed said, against the President’s shoulder.

“This? Stroking you?”

“Yeah.”

“Like a little cat.”

“It’s nice. I don’t know.”

“I suppose,” the President said, “that among other things it made me aware of how much you think, how much you feel, compared to how little you say.”

“What, you mean because I rambled at you stoned?”

“A man of deep and hidden passions,” the President said. “Stoned or not.”

“Okay,” Ed said.

“And just a really… vivid imagination for disgusting medical details.”

“Okay.”

 

The President kissed him. “Edward, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t feel about Claire as you did about Thomas.”

“Is that the question?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s different.”

“How?”

“It just is,” Ed said. “It’s a really different situation.”

“You weren’t ever jealous?”

“Sometimes I was… something. But not that. And not _of_ her. How could I be? That would be like... being jealous of your heart because it got to be in your chest.”

 

He felt the President shifting. Possibly to give him a look. “That’s a remarkably poetic turn of phrase.”

“I don’t know,” Ed said. “It’s how I feel.”

 

The President was quiet for a little while. “I think I see what…” he said. “It’s hard to know what… if other people see things.”

“I don’t know what I saw, but I know you loved her. Love her.”

“Yes,” the President said, simply.

“Well, I know that.”

“I suppose part of what I’m asking you is… Given how I… well, how I fucked that up…”

 

You sure did, Ed thought. But he didn’t think it would help anything to say that now. So he said the other thing he thought, the kinder thing: “I’m sorry,” he said. “You know that, right? I’m really, really sorry about what happened.”

 

It bothered Ed how much he wanted to say ‘I’m sorry, _something_ ’. ‘Something’ was where ‘sir’ would go. Or the President’s name. It was some kind of endearment, but he didn’t know what it was, I’m sorry, _blank_. Stupidly, probably because of the fact that he’d mentioned him earlier, all he could think about was the way Dennis Duffy called Liz Lemon ‘dummy’. He wondered if he could get away with calling the President dummy.

 

“I don’t really see how you can be sorry, situationally,” the President said, and Ed came back to things.

“I just can.”

“If I hadn’t, I doubt we’d be here. And I’m very glad we are, but I… I worry about what you said earlier, in light of that.”

 

“I don’t think about things that way,” Ed said. “I don’t do what-ifs. No point. You take the situation as it is, s… you take the situation as it is.”

“I suppose that’s sensible of you. But earlier…”

“Different thing.”

“Alright.”

“Besides,” Ed said. “She did… um.”

 

“Yes, alright,” the President said. “Fair point.”

“It’s just. Pretty different. She’s just different. From anyone.”

“Yes. She is.”

“Hey,” Ed said. He put his arm all the way over the President’s chest. He squeezed his shoulder. “You’re okay, dummy.”

 

Even from this angle Ed could see the President’s eyes widen. “ _Excuse me?_ ”

“I called you dummy,” Ed said.

“Yes, I heard you loud and clear. Is that something you really want to have said to me?”

“It’s what you are.”

 

He might, Ed realized, have actually managed to render the President speechless. He held his breath. He wanted to laugh. It was hard not to. But then he felt the President laughing. He felt his hands on his ass, gripping him, strong, and his chest quivering. He both heard and felt him say, “my god,” through rumbling chuckles and he let himself snicker in response. He cuddled up closer and lifted his head up so he could look the President in the face. “Hey,” he said, “do you really love me?”

 

The President was still laughing. “What the hell is this? What is happening?”

“Do you?”

“I said I did.”

“Yeah but do you?”

“Are you a teenaged girl?”

“What do you love about me?”

“Everything.”

“C’mon,” Ed said. “Humor me.”

 

“Let’s see,” the President said, stroking Ed’s butt, squeezing it tenderly. “You’re serious. You’re diligent. You’re not workshy.”

“You’re not writing me a reference letter.”

“You’re very funny.”

“Not always on purpose though.”

“You have a wonderful tight little ass.”

“I probably won’t always.”

 

The President snorted. “You’re not making this easy. You really haven’t had a lot of sleepovers, have you?”

“No,” Ed said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do know,” the President said. “I think you’re just not telling me.”

“Maybe.”

“Are you going to?”

“I don’t know.”

 

The President laughed. “Is this some sort of deal you’re cutting me?”

“Maybe.”

 

The President looked back at him for a moment or two. “You have substance, Edward,” he said, finally. “You’re a good person, and I feel that I, and my life, are better, and worth more when I am with you.”

 

Ed heard his own breathing, suddenly. He felt his limbs tingle arrestingly as if they were waking up. The President’s body felt physical again, present under him in a way that made his heart prickle and throb. He snuggled his head down again, into the crook of the President’s shoulder. It felt good.

 

“You alright?” the President asked him. “Where did you go?”

 

Ed nodded against him.

 

“Is that a good enough answer?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, well, it’s true, so there we are.”

“I do, um…” Ed said. “I do, you know.”

“I do,” the President said. “I know.”

“I’m trying to say it.”

“Alright. You don’t have to.”

“Yes I do, just…”

“It’s alright. It’s not necessary.”

 

“I love you,” Ed said. Saying it felt like his heart was spilling like colored paint, out of his body and all over the President’s body and all over the bed. He gasped like he really had spilled something and the President hugged him. Tight. All the way around. Ed couldn’t have moved if he’d wanted to. “I know you do,” he said. “It’s alright.”

 

Ed hugged him back. “Start the show.”

 

“Third time’s the charm,” the President said.

 

It wasn’t. But they woke up in the new world.


End file.
